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PKESBYTER IGNOTUS. 
Copyright by Xotmnn. Boston. 



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TWO SERIES 



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By 

'TRESBYTER IGNOTUS" 

(William Harman van Allen, S.T.D., L.H.D., D.C.L., 

Rector of the Church of the Advent. Boston) 



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Reprinted from 
"The Living Church" of 1909 and 1911 




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Milwaukee, Wis. 

THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 

1912 



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1912 



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co:miti pkimo 

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D. D. VAIsT ALLEN, LITT. D. 

HV]SrC LIBELLVM DEDICAT 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
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CONTENTS 





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Preface 

First Series. 

I. — I'axdey. Isle of Saints . 

II. — ^Xetherland .... 

in. — Walcheren .... 

IV. — From Vianden to Eciiternach 

V. — Einsiedelx .... 

A' I. — St. Gall axu Appexzell 

\' 1 1 . — Chur and ] > iechtex stei X 

VIII. — Gandria 

IX. — Flanders and Zeelaxd 

Second Series. 

I. — The Voyage, and Grasmere 81 

II. — Shropshire, the Welsh Border, and Caldey . . 03 

III. — Lincolnshire, Ely, Rotorua, and Hertfordshire . 104 

IV. — Of England in Generai 115 

V. — An Impression of York 123 

VI. — Walcheren Once More . 132 

\'rr. — Veere and Willemina 140 

A' III. — A Dutch CiixVTEau 152 

IX. — Ostende and Nuremberg Kil 

X. — Munich and the Danube 171 

XL — Vienna and Salzburg ISl 

XII. L\NSBEUCK: THE GlIOST OF SCHLOSS WeIHEEBURG . 181) 

XIII. — The Dolomites and Cortina 197 

XrV. — A Flight Through Switzerland 206 

XA^. — Back to the North Sea 217 

XA"I. — Good Old England 228 




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ILLUSTRATIONS 




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Frontispiecp: : The Author 

Guest-House Oratory, Benedictine Monastery, Isle of Cahley 

St. David's Church, Cakley 

A Bruramagen Lad, Cakley 

The Abbot Judging the High Jump . . . 
"Oldest Inhabitant," Isle of Cakley . 

Redberry Bay, Cakle.y 

Tlie Village Church, Veere, Holland . . 
Tiny Peasant Maids of Walcheren 

The Lookout on the Dyke 

(;)kl Harbour Tower, Veere 

"Willemina, My Special Favourite, and Four 

Maids" 

Vianden: The Bridge and the Castle 
Vianden : View from tlie Biltclien Road 

The Crucifix of Roth 

Echternach Abbey. Luxembourg .... 
Slirine of St. Willilnord, Ecliternach Abbey 

A View of St. Oallen 

Martinstol)el 



Types at Appenzell 

Byzantine Altar (A. D. 500), Cathedral, Chur 
Cathedral and Episcopal Court, Chur 

Schloss Liecliten,stein 

Clandria and the Lake of Lugano 

The Rhine-Fall 

The Schiller Bell, Schafl'hausen . 

The Road to Rest 

Coming from Church : Oostkapelle . 



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ILLUSTRATIONS ix 

Wostliove: The BisliG])'s Palace 72 

Yvonne and Claire 73 

Knitters in the Sun 74 

Zoiitelaiule : St. Willibrord's Town 75 

Grasmere 87 

Easedale Tarn, Grasmere 89 

Grasmere Parish Church 91 

Valle Crucis: West Wall 95 

Dormitory and Garth, Valle Crucis 101 

Tea in the Garden 105 

A Maori Salutation 112 

Allison 112 

York Minster .125 

The Shambles, York . 127 

Bishopthorpe, Palace (if the Archbishop of York .... 129 

"Greeting. ]\lijnheer" 133 

Tlie Harbour at Veere . 135 

The Water-Place 141 

Digna. the Carpenter's Daughter 145 

Willemina in Her Doorway 147 

Wilhehnina and Martina with the American Domine . . . 149 

A Dutch Chateau: "The Castle of the Beeches" .... 153 

Church Tower, Woudrichem . 156 

Amersfoort 157 

A Dutch Darby and Joan 160 

Yvonne and Sinionne 163 

.\ Beguine at Ostende 164 

'llie Market, Nuremberg 167 

Statue of Bavaria, Munich 173 

vfunich Cathedral 175 

Diirnstein 179 

Parliament Buildings and City Hall, Vienna 183 

]\larble Fountain. Cathedral Square, Salzburg 186 

Salzburg and the Fortress 187 

Innsbruck from Schloss Weiherburg 190 

St'hloss Weiherburg, Innsbruck 192 

A Tirolese Meadow . 194 

The Golden Balconv. Innsbruck 196 




TRAVEL PICTURES 





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A Dolomite Glen 

Pordoi, Dolomite Road 

Two Little Ampe/.zd Maids 

A Street in Gandria 

The Rhone Glacier. Fnrka 

A ^^ista of Fribonry 

The Cathedral, Freihuri; 

The Cathedral. Treves 

H. R. H. Marie Adelaide. ( 

Three Walcheren Grace 

Cornelia's Homestead . 

Kathje Milking . . 

A Hertfordshire Lane 

Tlie Farmhouse, Littlemoi 

A Kentish Maid 

Addison's Walk. Oxford 

Laud's Porch, St. Mary the Vira 



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PREFACE 

These letters from abroad were written ciiri-enfe ralaitio 
for The Living Clinrch, with no thought of their ever taking- 
more permanent shape. Scribbled in country inns by candle- 
light, in the green privacy of ancient forests, or on my knee 
in railway carriages, they are, for the most part, hasty im- 
pressions which wonld lose all their flavour in revision. So 
I let them stand as they are, personalities and all, now that they 
are gathered into book-form, only asking the reader not to com- 
l)lain because he finds the result neither a Baedeker nor a 
scientific treatise. 

Some travellers record all their annoyances, dwell in detail 
on every disenchantment, and, wherever they go, carry about 
an atmosphere of censorious unsympathy. Why, then, do they 
travel ( Friendliness begets friendliness, the Greek proverb 
well says; and no land will unveil its beauty to such visitors. 
But let a man shun the crowded cosmopolitan cities, let him 
traverse leisurely tlie oiicn country with its inispoiled people, 
whether by Dutch canal or Alpine torrent, and I promise him 
dtdiglits such as tliose other wanderers knew when Outre ^ler 
was all a region of wizardry, and every inn-window a magic 
casement. 

If I write enthusiastically of foreign friends, high and low, 
grown-up and little, it is becaus(> I have always found ready 
courtesy, swiftly responsive afl'ection. unfailing honesty and 
helpfulness, ungrudging hospitality, and am bound to bear 
my witness, however inadequately. W(^ have still much to 
learn from older nations; and we must lav aside that blind 



TRAVEL PICTURES 



satisfaction with everything American, which has cloaked too 
many of ns in bygxme years, and be willing to profit by contact 
with them. They tell a tale of Father Taylor, the famous mis- 
sionary to sailors in Boston, that, as he lay dying, one who 
watched said soothingly: "It's all right. Father Taylor; you 
will be with the angels soon." And Father Taylor answered 
faintly, but with a twinkling eye : "I don't care much about 
angels; I like foil's!" The phrase sums up a wholesome i^hilos- 
ophy of life. Peoijle are more than mountains, or rivers, or 
cathedrals and art-galleries ; and I hope that these sketches, 
filled with memories of little children, may help a little in the 
good work of an international Democracy, which some day, 
please God, shall bring all the nations into one friendly fellow- 
ship. WlLLlA.M IIaRMAX VAX AlLEX. 
Rectory of the Advent, Boston, 
Lammas Day, 1012. 



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CALDEY, ISLE OF SAINTS 

Til EKE is ahvajs a spell about the thoiiiiiit (»f an 
island. \o some of us tlioir names are musical as 
those of continents lU'ver can be: Colonsaj, Aran, lona, 
Corsica, Tahiti, Xantucket, Paumanok, Barbados — it 
matters not in what seas they are; white witchcraft broods 
over them all. And one does not wonder that religious of 
manj sorts have chosen island-shrines to be in some special 
sense holy ground, "comj)assed by the inviolate sea." Off 
Pembrokeshire, in Wales, there lies such a sacred isle, fra- 
grant with the incense of Religion for thirty generations, 
and now, after four centuries of desolation, once more 
given back to God and His C^hurch : (Jaldey, Island of the 
Prophets, House of God, Abode of the Servants of God — 
so the name is variously interpreted. And all these inter- 
pretations are fulfilled there to-day, as the good Bene- 
dictines under Abbot Aelred's crosier keep the Holy Pule 
established long ago by the saint of the thorns and roses. 
I had known something of the (Community for six or 
seven years, had welcomed the young Abbot to America 
at the time of his ordination by the Bishop of Fond du 
Lac in 1904, and had visited him at Painsthorpe the year 
following. So it has been a special ])leasure to see what 

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God hath wrought at Caldey, and to enter (so far as a 
guest may) into the life and spirit of the place, locus 
heiiedictus indeed, where I still linger, almost ready to 



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G UEST-IIOUSE OEATOKY, 
BENEDICTINE MONASTERY^ ISLE OF CALDEY. 

say, Haec requies mea in saecidum saecidl; hie habitabo 
qiioniam elegi earn. 

Physically, the island is extraordinarily interesting 
and beautiful, with colours and outlines varied far beyond 
what its size would lead one to expect. Seven miles round, 







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CALDEY, ISLE OF SAINTS 

indented by many bays, sheltered on the north by gray 
limestone cliffs and on the south by old red sandstone, 
there are rolling upland corn-fields ; breezy pastures 
where sheep and cattle feed ; sand-dunes covered with 
coarse grass ; a veritable forest of gorse taller than a man's 
head, and imj^enetrable — except where Brother John's bill- 
hook has carved out a tangled maze of truly scholastic 
intricacy; a sheltered valley where cottages lie close hid- 
den ; coppices and spinneys that echo to the voices of many 
song-birds; fish-ponds full of immemorial carp; mighty 
headlands falling sheer to the high tide ; and, above all, 
the wheeling, calling gulls, descendants, perhaps, of those 
that, in the legend, saved the baby-saint from drowning, 
along this very Welsh coast. By day the merry voices of 
the orphan lads from St. Benet's Orphanage in Birming- 
ham, now encamped above the village, are heard as they 
splash mightily in the sea ; the farmer's five sweet-faced 
little daughters beam shyly at the visiting priests from 
the Guest-House. Homeric laughter resounds from 
Drinkim Bay, where the amphibious do most resort; and 
always the monastery bell utters its tinkling Oremus 
fratres at the appointed times. Enchanted, truly ! One 
sits contemplative among the heather, book unnoticed, let- 
ters unwritten, any desire for further travel hushed (no 
small matter, that, to a restless American, victim of the 
"strenuous life"!). Then the bell calls for Vespers, and 
one hurries across the tiny stream, up past the ancient 
village church (built, they tell us, fourteen centuries ago), 
opens the gate to let the gracious Lady Abbess of Mailing 
enter first, and presently finds himself in the tiny tempo- 






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rary chapel of the C^ottage-Moiiastery. It is microscopic: 
all the other guests, except a Miriield Father and the 
transatlantic visitor, climb a vertical ladder into a sort of 
balcony ; and in the stalls below one finds it hard to bestow 
himself without encroaching. Would that the £1,500 the 
Abbot needs to finish the chapel adjoining, whose walls 
are already half-way up, might come speedily ! 

But, small as it is, the service is reverent and stately, 
and the plainsong exquisitely rendered. Adoremus in 
aeternum Saiictlssimum 8acram,entum. they all utter, 
monks, oblates, and guests ; and then the office goes on, 
with incense at the Magnificat, and Salve, Regina at the 
end, upsoaring in that poignant aspiration of filial love 
which has been our rightful inheritance ever since "Behold 
thy Mother" was spoken from the (-ross: clemeiis, pi a. 
dulcis Virgo Maria! 

Evensong follows in the village church close by, the 
English words falling with yet more blessed cadence on 
our ears than the Latin ; then dinner at the Guest-House, 
with the conversation veering swiftly from tariff reform 
to limericks, from Scott Holland's latest sermon to the 
relative merits of Ostende and Boulogne, wnth a lapse into 
pure nonsense now and then, rebuked by a voice from the 
far corner (a lay voice, entendii) learnedly discoursing 
of "three double swings" and "vesper lights," until one 
queries audibly whether out of a "spike" it would be 
possible to make a nail in a sure place ! Then a walk on 
the velvet turf beyond the round-towered oratory, in the 
light of such a sunset as even Capri cannot show, with 
liiffh discourse of sacred thino's before Him Who maketh 



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8 TRAVEL PICTURES 

the outgoing of the evening to praise Him, until "the 
Angelus at Compline doth sweetly end the day" — at least 
for the monks. The rest of us return to the common- 
room and tell ghost-stories, until the Warden's gentle voice 
warns us midnight approaches. So the day passes at 
Caldey, where the age of faith has returned. 

But another aspect appeared on Bank Holiday, speak- 
ing eloquently of what made 
England "Merrie England," 
l:)efore ever the blight of sor- 
did Protestantism had given 
ashes for beauty and forbidden 
men to serve the Lord with 
gladness : the Patronal Festi- 
val, the Pattern, the Kirmesse. 
St. Samson the Abbot's Day 
falls on July 28th; but very 
wisely its observance has been 
transferred to the following 
Monday, Bank Holiday. There 
were many early Masses, and 
at 9:30 all the jDopulation of 
the island gathered, thronging the tiny church, for High 
Mass and a sermon by the Abbot. The service was 
reverent and hearty, free from constraint and fussiness 
and pose ; the congregation sang everything, a monk at 
the organ leading ; and I shall not forget the lilting, 
heart-stirring singing of ''Hark, the sound of holy voices" 
to "Aberystwith," or the dear simplicity of the small 
sandalled acolytes, as they curled up on the altar-steps 





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CALDET. 



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wliile the Abbot preached of love as the essence of 
Christian living, and pictured a community wherein all, 
from the last to the first, should grow to be saints because 
they loved as brethren. 

After lunch came the sports down by the sand-dunes, 






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THE ABBOT JUDGIXG THE HIGH JUMP. 






villagers, visitors from Tenby, and fishermen, all partici- 
pating. The Abbot, mitre and crosier laid aside, was 
master of the revels, with that sunny boyishness and 
hilarity which captivates all that feel its charm. All the 
monks assisted, and the guests looked on with amused 
appreciation at the potato race, the high jump, and the 



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TRAVEL PICTURES 

other feats of strength and skill. I fear the amateur 
status of the prize-winners was hopelessly lost, for I heard 
a pleasant chinking when the prizes were awarded ; l;)ut 
what matters that ? Tea followed, in the monks' garden, 
for everyone, including tangle-haired, three-year-old Vera 
Louisa, who informed everyone from Mr. Waud's 

shoulder, that she ''was doin' 
to have tea wid de monks." 
Everything was devoured — - 
even the prize cakes and loaves 
of the morning's competition 
— by the hungry company. 
Caldey air is prodigiously ap- 
petizing, even as Caldey soil 
is fertile : witness the monster 
vegetables, and the lovely flow- 
ers on exhibition after Mass. 

At 7 Solemn Evensong was 
sung in the village churi-h, 
thronged even in the porch, 
and further, with a sermon 
by an American visitor, who 
talked of what the heavenly 
citizenship meant, in that we 
were followers of St. Samson and of all the l)right com- 
pany who reign with Christ. And later, when darkness 
had closed down, fireworks dazzled the children, balloons 
soared upward, and the three little girls who sat on my 
knees said, "Dear St. Samson must ho pleased ; we've kept 
his birth-day so happily." 




OLDEST INHABITANT, 
ISLE OF CALDEY. 




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Yea ! Who shall doubt that Caldey was compassed 
about that day with a great company of witnesses ? St. 
Illtyd, St. David, St. Paul de Leon, St. Gildas, St. Dubri- 
cius, "the high saint," all rejoiced with St. Samson, their 
fellow. St. Joseph of Arimathea looked down, St. Bene- 
dict beamed ap]3roval, Our Lady joyed with her children, 




KEDBERKY BAY^ CALDEY. 



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and the King of Saints, Whose delights are with the sons 
of men, poured out His grace upon those who hailed Him 
Mirahilis in Sanctis Suis. 

It was one thousand three hundred and eighty-four 
years ago that St. Samson, born a child of vows, first saw 
the light, regnante Arthuro Rege. Yet still his name 
survives, a power for good, in both Britains, nowhere more 
honored than here, where he ruled in wisdom and holiness. 
And none who visits Caldev ari2:ht will fail henceforward 



12 



TRAVEL PICTURES 



to add to Jbis litanj, Sancte Samsone, ora pro nobis, nor 
to breathe a prayer for those who carry on St. Samson's 
work, the true Opus Del, in the isle beloved. 



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II. 

NETHERLAND 

IT is impossible to find any parallel for HoUaud. I 
think of Lincolnshire, with its long, low pastures ; of 
Hampton Meadows, on the jSTew Hampshire coast, where 
the farmers gather the hay from the salt marshes, in 
'^gundalows" (gondolas, be it understood) ; of the malarial 
ex]3anse of the Montezuma marshes, where little has 
changed since the Iroquois paddled their canoes through 
its reedy channels. But all comparisons fail ; Holland is 
unique. "God made the rest of the world; but we Dutch 
made our own country for ourselves," they say; and when 
one goes for miles over rich green fields that lie sixteen 
feet below seadevel, or hears men discuss calmly the 
draining of the great Zuider Zee, which will add fourteen 
hundred square miles of arable land to the kingdom, one 
understands what they mean. Napoleon, seeking justifi- 
cation for his attempted annexation of Holland to France, 
described the Low Countries as "the alluvial deposits of 
French rivers" ; but he had only a partial understanding 
of the case. I like better the splendid answer of the 
Dutch Ambassador to Berlin, at the great review of vic- 
torious German troops returning from conquered France. 
It was o-enerallv believed that Bismarck cast covetous eves 



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Oil Holland; and bis invitaTion to the Dutch Ambassador 
to assist at tlie review bad tlie nature of a veiled tbreat, 
wbicb the Dutebinan did not fail to understand. Keai- 
nient after regiment passed by; and to Bismarck's inquiry ji | fl 
the Dutchman answered each time: "Fine troops, but ^^F^ 
they are not tall enough." When the criticism had been 
passed upon the Emperor's bodyguard itself, Bismarck lost 
patience and said, "What does your Excellency mean by 
that remark V "I mean," said the Ambassador calmly, 
"that we can flood our country twelve feet deep !'' And 
they would have done it, too, as they did in the days oi 
William the Silent, had it been necessary. 

Yesterday was Queen Wilbelmina's twenty-ninth 
birthday, and everybody celebrated. The smallest chil- 
dren wore orange sashes and garlands ; the Dutch tri- 
colour, surmounted by orange pennants, flew from all the 
buildings ; a fine array of troops paraded along the famous 
Araliel>aan with its triple rows of lindens ; and fifty 
thousand people crowded the Vredenburg, the great open 
square in front of our hotel, to hear military music and 
see the fireworks at night. Whoever calls the Dutch 
"■phlegmatic" or lacking in enthusiasm, does not know 
them : it was a passionate demonstration of national ])rido, 
and loyalty to the sweet representative of the House of 
Orange. And if it seemed a little absurd to credit the 
young wife of Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwcrin with 
all the good deeds of her far-off ancestors ; if one might 
have desired something else by way of government for 
the land where their High Mightinesses the States-General 
first showed the world what a federal republic could do: 




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still, there was a touch of idealism and roniauce about it 
all which was not luipleasing. 

To-day, all has settled down to its wonted course; 
canal-boats are poled leisurely along the Oude Gracht ; the 
tish-market is crowded; tiny, crowded tram-cars jingle 
along the crooked streets ; wooden shoes clang on the spot- 
less brick j^avement; white-capped housemaids work as 
they never do in America, alas ! And the grey Cathedral 
tower looks down from its three hundred and thirty-eight 
feet much as it did nearly three centuries ago when an 
ancestor of my own set sail from Utrecht in the Gilded 
Beaver, for IvTew Amsterdam and Beverwyck. The tower 
stands alone ; for back in the seventeenth century a hurri- 
cane blew down the nave of the church, which has never 
been rebuilt. An ojDen square separates the tower from 
the choir and transepts, which were patched up after the 
ruined nave had been cleared away ; and when one enters, 
and sees how hideous pews and whitewash deface and 
degrade all that is left, one could almost wish that the 
destruction had been complete. The line old cloisters con- 
nect the church with the university, which is a year 
younger than Harvard, and has seven hundred and iifty 
students. Utrecht used to be a walled city ; but the old 
fortifications have given place to handsome boulevards and 
promenades, adorned with flowers and trees ; and as I 
looked down on the red-tiled roofs of the city, from th(^ 
tower, it was enriched with a broad green cincture that 
testified to undisturbed peace, such as old times seldom 
knew. 

Nine miles away lies the little town of Zeist, j(»ined 



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TRAVEL PICTURES 

to Utrecht bv a street-car line ; and J wish you could make 
that journey! The road is paved all its length Avith brick, 
and lined with magnificent rows of moss-covered beeches ; 
hundreds of black-and-white cattle pasture in the vividly 
green fields; country-houses more homelike than those of 
England are set among wonderful flower-beds, on every 
side ; and there is not a trace of poverty or uncleanliness 
all the way. The Dutch roads put an American to shame ; 
for the worst of them are macadamized as well as our 
state roads, while the principal highways are paved their 
whole length, even in the open country. And everywhere 
stretch stately lines of trees, relieving the monotony of 
the wide, level pastures ; while the brown sails of vessels 
aj)pear unexpectedly on all sides, moving along the net- 
work of canals. 

More old-world costume survives here than anywhere 
else in Western Europe, I think. We went over to the 
Island of Marken from Amsterdam, the (^ther day, and 
found a community of perhaps two thousand people, as 
separate and distinct in dress, customs, and all else save 
language, as if it belonged to a different planet. The men 
are fishermen, and wear vast, voluminous knee-breeches, 
double-breasted jackets, round caps, coloured stockings, and 
(of course) wooden shoes; but the women are even more 
peculiarly attired. If a mere man may attempt to describe 
such things, they wear dark skirts, with In-ight aprons, a 
"body" of striped calico, with dark over-sleeves coming 
above the elbows, and a sort of breast-plate (is "plastron" 
the correct name?) of brilliantly figured calico. Their 
hair is clip]H'd, except for a pair of long curls which hang 



m 



^'{fC 




wvyr? 







in front of the ears ; and a close tnrban covers the head, 
straight ''bangs" alone appearing from nnder it. All the 
islanders are connected by marriage ; and there is in con- 
sequence a very general family resemblance. I never saw 
so many vast, cavernons, rongh-hewn months in my life 
as there: the whole lower jaw seems to fall away when 
they are opened. Across the Gouw Zee, a few miles away, 
lies Volendam, another fishing village on the mainland, 
where the costnmes, though just as strange, are quite 
different. Every village boasts its own peculiar pattern 
of head-dress for the women, often made of silver-gilt, tit- 
ting closely to the head and with lace caps to cover it ; and 
an expert can readily identify each by the cut of the lace, 
or the shape of the metal. In this, as always, the women 
are much more conservative than the men ; while the upper 
and middle classes dress in that ugly and commonplace 
fashion which a prosaic civilization prescribes for all its 
victims, whether .in Holland or America. 



I have journeyed lately through Guelderland, along 
roads which very few foreigners ever travel. Beyond 
Zeist and Driebergen a steam-tramway runs across 
country, right through the lovely village streets, and by 
the bank of the Rhine to Arnhem. It is quite hilly, with 
long stretches of moorlands, purple with heather ; ever- 
greens diversify the beech forests ; the air is more bracing ; 
and I fancied T saw a finer cast of countenances among 
the people. It has always been a problem where our 
American ]')('n])l(' got their ide;i of the village, with 




.^^l 



''^5^V~^^\'^\D(5'V"^.r^'='j£^''v''^ff-^^^ 







FRAVEL PICTURES 



detached houses each in its own garden and lawn, and all 
embowered in shade. It certainly did not come from the 
British Isles, nor from France or Germany ; and, as I 
rejoiced in the exquisite beauty of the little communities 
of Guelderland, I was glad to acknowledge another debt 
of gratitude to Holland. 

I'm not writing a chapter out of a guide-book ; sc* I 
spare you details. But I wish you could have seen the 
splendid church tower at Rhenen, erected in a memorable 
year, 1492. The Dutch churches, however, are very dis- 
appointing inside. Built, for the most part, of brick, and 
intended for the glorious worshijD of the ancient ( Iiurch, 
they are now marred and defaced in a way to hreak one's 
heart. Religious bitterness raged here fearfully during 
the long wars with Spain, when Alva's men and the 
Iconoclasts vied with one another in atrocities ; and the 
churches all suifered. The "Reformers" broke down the 
carved work of God's House with axes and hannners, as 
the Psalmist had foretold of them : all the beauty of fresco 
and inlay was obscured under hideous whitewash ; and 
now the aisles, transepts, and chancels are desolate waste 
places, used for luml)er-rooms, while oidy the naves, clut- 
tered with high-backed pews and dominated by gigantic 
pulpits, are used on Sunday. All the rest of the week the 
churches are locked u}). It is no wonder that of hite years 
there has been a marked reacti<in t(»\vards the ( *atholicism 
of the only kind common here; for Dutch Calvinism is 
colder and more dreadful than any form known in 
America since the nineteenth century began. But this is 
not a theological treatise, either, I must remind mvsclf. 



Cr^'V"^ 



M 



From Ariilieni I caiiic by train to The iiagiic, surely 
one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, and ( at least 
since 1899 and the Peace Congress) one of the most 
famous. It is not veiy large, having onlv al)out two 
hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants ; but as the seat 
of the Dutch Court and Parliament, and as the home of 
the new International Tribunal which Carnegie's millions 
are to house so handsomely, it has a special importance, 
while the unspeakably beautiful forests on either side, 
the lovely country-seats, the rich meadows, and the fresh 
breezes from the Xorth Sea, only two miles away at 
Scheveningen, all combine to make it preeminent among 
Dutch cities. Our sea-coast has nothing comparable wuth 
the splendid boulevard at Scheveningen; and even Marble- 
head and Gloucester at their quaintest are not so odd and 
old-time as the fishermen's quarter there. To the south 
lies Delft, famous for its blue faience, and as the burial- 
place of the great Prince of Orange, William the Silent. 
I stood by his grave to-day, in the '"^ew Church'' (so 
called because it was built in 1396, a century later than 
the ''Old Church" of Delft), and afterwards visited the 
Prinsen-hof, where the bullet-marks on the wall show 
where he was assassinated in 1584. ^orth of The Hague 
is Leiden, which the Spaniards besieged so long in vain. 
You remember, perhaps, that when the Spanish soldiers 
mocked the valiant defenders as "cat-eaters" because of 
the extremities to which lack of food had brought them, 
the burgomaster answered : "Yes, we eat eats, and are 
willing to eat dogs and rats, if need be. When they are 
gone, we will cut otf our left arms and feed on them, so as 






to be strengtbeued a little longer for tbe defence of 
Leiden!" And wben, at last, tbe discomfited Spaniards 
fled, and William tbe Silent offered Leiden wbatever re- 
ward it desired for its gallantry, tbe men of Leiden, in- 
stead of asking for a remission of taxes, demanded tbe 
foundation of a university. 




We journey soutbward from bere, into tbe least fre- 
quented and most primitive province of tbe iSTetberlands, 
Zeeland, ancient borne of tbe Sea-Beggars. If balf tbe 
promises tbey make concerning it are fulfilled, I sball bave 
mucb to sbare witli you all. 

Till tben, Dag, Mljnhecren. as we say in Holland. 




^^;s<)ypsssro^ 






vyim 



III. 

WALCHEREN 






^ TF one has found an enchanted land, so that he can 

^' A thenceforth say Ef ego in Arcadia ri.ri. ought he to 

0r;; _ kee]) the secret (.)f its existence for a ]:)eculiar possession, 







THE VILLAGE CHURCH^ VEERE, HOLLAND. 

or rather to initiate others, that they, too, may travel that 

way and rejoice with him ? Of course, on high social 

grounds, there is no doubt that the second course is prefer- 

r-(;>-'"' able or<1iuarilv; luit the charm is so fiigiti\"('. and so much 



iwmMif^ 



^^^S^'^^s-'^^^^r^^^^'S^'^^^&^^^^V^ 




TRAVEL PICTURES 

of the joj lies in that it is "a garden enclosed," that one 
onght to consider carefnllv what he does. 

For example, I told yon alxnit Lnxendjonrg ; and no 
harm has resnlted, becanse the readers of The Liring 
CJinrcli are a select company: I never wonld have dared 
to point ont the road that leads to Vianden and peace, in 
the colnmns of a daily paper. So, now, I propose to share 
another secret with yon ; and, if ever we meet, we shall 
have a pass- word to exchange, whispered so that the pro- 
fane vnlgar shall hear no syllable of it. It is WalcJiereii. 

I write from a qnaint old towered inn overhanging an 
Xy^ arm of the N^orth Sea, and guarding the harbour-month (_)f 
Veere. Once, when Veere was a prosperous city, with 
'l/^ eighty vessels clearing daily, and all the wool trade of 
Scotland with the continent centered here, there was a 
second tower on the other side of the harbour, with ware- 
houses and palaces clustered round it ; and the two towers 
were the device on Veere's arms. But as, years before, 
Kampon, Veere's predecessor, just across the water on 
the next island, had disap^Dcared in a night, some new- 
yawning abyss swallowing it up, so half of Veere van- 
ished likewise; and since then the Kampveersche Toren 
has stood solitary, watching over a glorious past, with only 
a few fragments left to show what greatness once was here. 
A few artists frequent it, since Boughton discovered it 
thirty years ago; now and then a Frenchman, who has 
j2^, read Henri Havard's Heart of Holland, finds his way 
here. But the "tripper" is happily al:)sent ; the Cook's 
tourist knows it not ; the loud-voiced, hurrying, money- 
ffettino' Philistine who makes one blush for his native land 



r^^n 



i 




rsjv^,''^/yop^jsAAA^i''r''T"nf^^SAAA^"*' 



)Y?..T 



r-^.s.-A.A y V7 >y\/\A/ynr- 






«.j M'^i Vf--. 1^ • IXT ■>,'^.;^,^.^-'^ ''^^''>{-'^i^.^ ■'""!' T' 






OS 



WALCHEREN 



23 



^ 




TINY PEASANT MAIDS OF WALCHEREX. 



wyvr 



in'ri<vy>^on;w)v?2r(\yv:)::^n 



t?l 



.•;d 



03 



fiS 










24 TRAVEL PICTURES 

liiiJs nothing t(» draw him here (])i'ais(' the saints, and 
specially good St. AVillibrord, ^Vpostlo (_)f Waleheren I ). 
And one can meditate serenely, with no other distnrhance 
than the sweet salntations <:»f tiny peasant-maids who l)l<is- 
som round like flowers, in the loveliest costume ever de- 
signed to retrieve Mother Eve's transgression. (I daren't 
undertake to describe it ; l)ut Willemina, my special fa- 
V(>nrite shown here in the midst of fonr other small maids 
on their way t(_» school, wears it irresistibh^ ) 

Veere is the consummation of Waleheren, as Wal- 
eheren of Zeeland, and Zeeland of the whole King<lom. 
Yon may renieml>er the Frenchman who reasoned thus: 
"France is the hrst nation of the world; Paris is the chief 
city of France; the Eitz is the l)est hotcd in Paris; Suite A 
is the most nmguifieent in the Eitz ; I occupy Suite A : 
rrgo. I am the central figure of the world." Well, I am 
almost tempted to follow his logic, as I look from the 
Toren out on magnificent dyke-girdled wheat-fields, red- 
roofed villages, embowered in trees, each clustercfl round 
the (diurcli that names it : Aagtekerke, St. Agatha's 
(Jhurch ; Biggekerke, St. Bega's ; Boudewijnskerke, St. 
Baldwin's, and the others ; stately avenues leading up to 
country-houses where some of Holland's most illustrious 
families dwell; fragments of the great Forrt Saiis Pitie 
that once covered the island, now left like hits of Broce- 
liande, and, over all, that low-hanging sky mantled with 
pearly clouds, the inspiration and the despair of painters 
since Vermeer's tiuie. 

I, too, des])air of making you feed, by mere words, 
anvthinii' of the extraordinar\' fascination of this bewit(di- 




'■ii-ivn 




|^\>Ti;:^?^>y^^rT]i^'i^^ 



WALCHEREN 








mi^i 



iiig isle; it is as if yolialciniia, the sea-godtlcss, whom 
the Ronians worslii])])(Ml licrc*, bad left a spell round her 
ancient hannts ; or rather, as if St. Willilirord, when he 

hronght fresh water from the 
de])tlis of the sand-dnnes close 
l)v the sea at Zontelande in an 
unfailing supply that serves 
to-day, had invoked a blessing 
super aquas refectionis every- 
wbei'e in the island he con- 
\'erted twelve centuries ago. 
bike pious ^Eneas, much 
tosse*! al)out on land and on 
the dee^), I have seen nniny 
countries and have entered 
syrapatheticalh' into the lives 
()f their people ; but none com- 
])ares with this in the irresist- 
ible force of its appeal. A 
Harvard don, writing to me 
just now from the Idistering 
asphalt of Paris and the end- 
less, soul-wearying galleries of 
the Louvre, has the im]ierti- 
nence to sympathize with me 




TUK nooKOl'T OX 
THE DYKE 



over being "among the drear v. 



dark dunes of desolate Tlolland !" Yet, while he is poring 
over acres of canvas splotched by hunuin hands with col- 
ours that have fadecl or are fading, and trying to see what 
some lono'-dcad artist thouu'lit he saw, I ha\'c all about mc 






26 



TRAVEL PICTURES 



ta^J/^ in God's own breeze-swept galleries, ever-changing pietnres 
^(Y^ of His painting, and living figures that glow with whole- 
some beauty and goodness. I had rather have my lookout 
here from the Toren than all Paris; and tiny Jannetje, 
lis])ing Ons Yadcr ;it iii\- knee, is iiKirc (difviiii:' societv 









OLD UARBOUE TOWER, VKEKK. 

than all the University Presidents that ever invented new 
religions. 

Put what is Yeere like, do you ask? Two buildings 
dominate it: one the vast fourteenth-century church, a 
veritable cathedral for size, now quite desolate and empty 
except for two apse-chapels thrown into one and used for 
the Iveformed congregation's assend)ly ; the other the 
/S7ar//////.v. or city-hall, its ex(iuisite, fragile minaret rising 
in a sort of arabes(|iie abo\'e the I'ich Sixteenth-century 
Gothic of its front. The minster is silent; but every 
halfdioiir ihe old, old carillon in llie Shullnns tower riid<les 



il^, 



mm 






'^^^^^■c^. 






^'- iNrv\.-,/v-; ■m'rwvAo /V7"^r''fw\.-v/v^ f^/vs a/'K' ^r■'"■g~-^1rvv^. vv7 r- 



m 



f^ 



^A- 



^v 



':<z^f-^^^<::rr"T^'!^t^'^^''/'r/^'^'"T'V(^:■~^'^^fYvr7iT 



WALCHEREN 




forth the melody of ^'Ehi feste Burn 1st ansev Gott." 
(Yesterday it sounded just at the Elevation, in the tiny 
Roman chapel on the quay!) 

Little else is left of the ancient grandeur ; two or 
three splendid crow-stepped house-fronts show Ikjw the 
merchant-princes used to live ; and in the tiny museum :^R/W 



the stately custodian displays the famous silver-gilt cup, i^v 
adorned with repousse work, which Maximilian of Bur- '-^T 
gundy gave to Veere four centuries ago, and which ^^ 
millionaires have striven in vain to carry off for collec- ^ 
tions. But there are red-tiled roofs so steep that the gulls Tjirc 
cannot perch on them ; old brick cottages whose hues are 
richer than the reds of Venice ; a little harbour full of 
brown-sailed fishing boats, whose masters stalk along the 
quay in sea-boots and silk hats. There are gardens over- 
flowing with flowers ; a great windmill flaps its arms 
giant-like, till one syiii])athizes with Don (Quixote; the 
learned Welerwaardc Ilccr Domine and his charming wife 
put their perfect English at the disposal of the ('n(iuiring 
stranger ; and the children are everywhere, with shining 
faces and waving hands and such ready friendliness that 
one wants to be Briarciis and embrace them all. Whether 
they knit patiently at the stockings which the saljofs wear 
out so fast, or dance in a ring on the beach "with woven 
paces and with waving arms," or stand in ra])t sea-ward 
gaze on the dykes, they are always ad()ral)le. Some day 
a little book will appear, about real f«»reign children T 
know, with pictures of Simonne and Bianca and Mar- 
guerite and Ailisdu, and all my s])eeial favourites: very 
likelv its cliniiters will first see the liii,'ht here. And I 



it 



^-■Vii5 



^^^o^'\;^i^^J=^i:^^V?^t 






r'--YrT:'^''-m, 



28 



TRAVEL PICTURES 



wai'u \i)\\ that, place au.v princesses being law, so that 
II. II. II. Marie Adelaide of Luxembourg shall come first, 
my tiny peasant-maids of Veere shall follow close after 
her. I supjDOse trifles please me disproportionately ; so I 
acknowledge that the pleasantest sensation of this whole 
summer has been to find myself remembered and hailed 
by name as l)e A inefilcacmsche Heer l)(>}niite by radiantly 
smiliijg ('hi'istiiia and Pieternelhi and Kathje and fifty 
more. 

There is nothing to do in Veere: I mean, you have not 
to draw up a sight-seeing programme each night and 
wearily fulfil it the next day. But time never hangs 
heavy. There are the l)oats to watch, with their fares of 
fish; good old S('hi])])('rs plies l)ack and forth in his ferry- 
boat from ivToord-Beveland ; a yacht juits in, flying the 
British ensign; Johanna Goedl»l<:)ed, aged twelve, is ready 
to discuss the relative merits of peasant-girls' costumes 
and burgher-girls' garments like those she wears — a trifle 
consciously; the queer old Englishman who haunts the 
place has some Int of newly-discovered history to impart ; 
the light and shadow on the polder change magically ; 
and, after dinner, when l)risk and kindly Martina lu'ings 
tea u]> on the flat roof of the tower, and the little company 
holds high converse, with the firmament for cloth-of-estate, 
the Schouwen light flashing each minute to remind us 
that we are almost out at sea, one looks back over a day 
whose every hour has been filled to overflowing, yet with 
neither satiety nor fatigue at the end. 

Prociil, pj'ocid esfe. profanl! If any of you can not 
be content with sim])le things, or yearn for excitement. 







^^^ 



s.-v\ yv^ ^r-"^ — yvy^/sA./yi rNfvyv/wrr-TTir^rs'vyv^ ■^T"^^^^A■yV7 f 



\rr(mm\ 



3CS^V^<^ 



WALCHEREN 



29 













''WILLEMIXA, :\IY i^PECIAL FAVOUKITE, A:yD FOUR OTHEK 
SMALL MAIDS." 



'^^Vi 









TRAVEL PICTURES 



keep away from my sanetuarx. It is ijo place for the 
iiiisympatbetic, the coldly critical, or the superior. Only 
the childlike ought to go to this paradise of children; for 
they only have the open vision and the open heart. But 
they, coming from whatsoever burdens of labour or whehn- 
ing seas of anxiety to rest a little here, will ever afterward 
have a joyous memory, can always think exultantly of 
Zeeland's proud motto, set beneath its device of a swim- 
ming lion: Liictor ef Emevgo, "I struggle and emerge." 

More of Walcheren another time. Just now the 
English Captain calls me to the tower-smnmit, where we 
shall discuss American humour, the influence of Japanese 
art on English ])aiuters, modern ]iiinor ]ioets, and our 
favourite sweetmeats. 





']mt~r't^t\C^/vi"~T-'^>j^i\\r^^ ^^^'^A^^ r 




V^f '';•)" 




^# 



FROM VIANDEN TO ECHTERNACH 

THE clavs of pilgrimages are not over; I have just 
made one. For though a battered Panama and an 
umbrella took the place of the hat with scallop-shell and HJOI 
staff, it was none the less a religious journey to the shrine ^^ 
of a great saint, Willibrord, A^jostle of the Low Countries ^J 
and of Luxembourg. ^ 

'"Ah," jou say, "here come the inevitable jSTether- 
lands." To be sure ; we haven't finished with Walcheren 
yet : I hope to return there in another letter. But this 
tells of far dilfereiit scenes, among wooded hills and 
castled crags, where the air is crisp and bracing, and the 
streams make a joyful noise as they flow, and one can 
almost see Rosalind and Celia, with the melancholy 
Jacques, and all the rest of that goodly fellowship, down 
the dell ; for it is the veritable Forest of Arden, where still 
the red deer rove and the long aisles of the woodland 
stretch mysteriously into regions of blended ronumce and 
history. If I should once begin to eidarge on the legends 
and associations of the Ardennes, there would never be an 
end: so I must go on at once with my pilgrinurge. 

'Idiere was a heavy white fog this morning, when I 
came down to breakfast at a l)ai'baroiisl\- carlv hour, in the 



<i/"x7' 



1^^^.^- 



3r^;M 






32 






WTaTHT^T 



TRAVEL PICTURES 



^ 



cozy Hoii'J (Ics I'j'i niiKjci-s at N'iaiulcii: hut ii'ood Picar, the 
cheery huullord, r('il('rat(<l, // fml hcmi /I'lnps, iii((i/infi,que, 
M. I'Ahhe! And so it ])r(>\-('(l. 1 said ,iiiH»(ld)ye to Mile. 
Bertha, La h'nsr <Ji's A nlc niics. cast a l(M»k iqnvard to 

wdicrc the in i 12,' h t y 
castle, cradle of the 
Honsc of Orange, was 
just a]>])('ariiiii' ini its 
throne through the 
vnist-wreaths, and gave 
the Avnrd to the coach- 
man. AVe started, with 
a crack of the lash, up 
ihe hillside road, un- 
der the carved figures 
of Faith, Plope, and 
( diarity lieneath their 
cano])y in the living 
I'ock (memorials of an 
ancient altar to the 
three Xorns, they 
say), i»ast the Idack- 
a n d - wdi i te l:)oundary 
])ost, with its Kdiu;/- 
rclrJt PreussetK and in 
h\'e minutes fV>nnd 
ourselves l)y the ancient (^anmandery of the Knights 
Templar at lu>th. The house has been remodelled 
into a comfort al)le dwelling not nnlike some old Eng- 
lish maniu'-honse in East Anulia; hut the cha])el is now 







-^ 



VIAND EX. 
THE BRIDGE AND THE CASTLE. 



rPF'ri^o^'''?^ rr'O^T^r 



^nii 






/g?v^,-^<;.-> 






Qi-- \ •<:: 



1^^- 



^^ t 






FROM VIANDEN TO ECHTERNACH 




ii 






1^ 







33 



. MB 

-J fefss^rs 



.IU4 




jYVV>-7- 



r 









TRAVEL PICTURES 




the parish church of Koth, and stands under the shadow 
of a magnificent linden, twenty feet in girth, planted 
by St. Willibrord himself when he evangelized these 
regions. Its doors are carved with the Templar cross, 
above which appears the cross of the Hospitallers ; for, 
after the suppression of the Templars, Roth was bestowed 
upon the younger order. . . , 

But there are yet more venerable traditions. Part of 
the foundation is Roman work ; there is a round apse at 
the end of the north aisle, with strange arcading outside ; 
and they say that an underground passage leads from 
beneath the altar, three miles, to the ruin of another castle. 
On the north side of the churchyard stands a very old 
st(»ne cruciiix, with a life-size figure, wonderfully dignified 
and ])athetic in the appeal of its outstretched arms. I 
am glad they placed it there, where, according to old use, 
the bodies of the unbaptized and the excommunicate were 
buried, as if to bear witness to the infinite and eternal 
power of the C-ross. "In the ])lace where the tree falleth, 
there it shall lie," is doubtless a true saying; but who 
knows what the Carpenter of jSTazareth may do with that 
tree ? 

For seven miles, from Roth to Wallendorf, we were 
in Prussian territory. The villages are desolately squalid, 
far worse than those across the river in Luxembourg, with 
vast embankments of l^arnyard manure in front of each 
house, and dirty-faced, red-eyed children playing in the 
filth. But the country is ln'avenly. Scarlet poppies 
flamed in the midst of the still unripened oats, rich 
meadows were yielding their second crop of hay, lilack 



Hfs.\r\ .■^ .'\^i 




T^^-Ofvyy, 




':K'm 



^^u^ 







Yr^:{v<YnX 



FROM VIANDEN TO ECHTERNACH 



35 



^^^ 











^^ - "^ 



S^A^ 



THE CRUCIFIX OF ROT II. 






znn'r^YV'}7.r<^^'Vi<?npf~ 



'LjJ;< 




36 



TRAVEL PICTURES 






cattle grazed contentedly, watche<l <,>\er l)y shockdieaded 
peasants with expressionless faces, and everywhere the 
forests of birch, beech, and e"\'ergreen clapped their hands 
fi>r joy in the chill freshness of the morning breeze. 

By the bend in the road a mossy cross told where a 
murder had Ijeen wrought, generations ago, and Ijesought 
a Eequicscat for the victim — aye, and for his red slayer, 
too, who perhaps knew not what he did. Further on, a 
battered, crudely carved crucitix bore on its front the 
wdiole of the In Prlnctplo cval Vcrhinti. with the date 
1(303. How incredildy old that would seem at h<:)me ; 
how of yesterday here ! 

Wayside shrines had oiferings of lield-flowers before^ 
them, to testify that into the dull lives of these hard- 
\vorked, heavy-faced peasants shines the sunlight of the 
great Ho})e which alone makes life worth while, because^ 
l:)y it a door is 0}>eucd into heaven. Ah, 1 luul rather bo 
•Johann Bauer, on his l<iiees l)ef(»re the ]»icture of GJod 
Incarnate, worshi])]»ing Ilim \\'\\\\ lo\ing faith, and ask- 
ing the prayers of His blessed Mother and all other saints, 
here on this forest-road of the Ardennes, than any con- 
ceited University Brcsidcut, "doctored" a huudriMl times, 
frostily self-compbicent, and preaching a uew religion of 
surgery and science, with neither comfort nor inspii-atioii. 

(Jrossing the Sure \)\ the old bridge, nwv tinds himself 
back in the Grand-Duchy, and rejoices accordingly. 
Thereafter, on either side of the river, are traces of the 
Bonian occu]^ation to delight arclupologists. Thus, a 
pleasant \'ill;i at ]]olleudorf has iu the wall of a look-out 




^B 




■.rsA^/l/y^hj f~-V] 






a^ 






^ 



^T 






^ v^ 







FROM VIANDEN TO ECHTERNACH 



tower l»v the i!,ar«]cii a fraii'iiU'iit of sculpture, rescued 

■ . ' . . . .... -^ 

fretni The river, with an illea;ib]e Latin inscription; the '. : :' 

lignre is that of a fishtn-nian, trident in hand, with his ^^7^ 

basket over his shoulder, and shows uot a little realism. ' | 

Further on, high up on the hillside iu a dense thicket of ~^J% 

evergreens, stands an altar \o Diana, l)earing this h'gend 

plain to see : 



Deae Dianae 

Q. Postvmivs . Poteiis 



V. S. 



There are rcdiefs on the base, bnt s(_) weather-worn as 
to be liarelv visible. One likes t(_) l)(die\'e that the pious 
lionian wdio nuide an offering, fV)r his sours health, to 
Diana, \-irgin goddess of the chase, here in these sweet 
sylvan hainits fifty generations agC), found the unknown 
God not unmindful of his piety, and because he wor- 
shipped, albeit ignorantly, has long ag<5 reached the goal 
he sought. 

Xot far away,, at IJerdorf, is a little village church 
where the altar is ]>uill out of the car\-ed stones of a iionian 
altar — a mystery, indeed, setting forth truths far deeper 
than the villagers a|»])r(dieud, while Hercules, ^Minerva, 
duno, and A])ollo hold u]) the niensa for the Pnre ()l)latiou. 

.Vs the road bent sharply, twin spires ai)])eared in 
the distance: it was the Abl)ey of Echteruach. The ri\"er- 
bank was liue(l with washerwomen, on their knees, scrub- 
bing iu the stream itself, pounding the garments on ilat 
stones, and then s])readiug them out on the grass to 
bleacdi and dry — a familiar sight to Kuro])ean travellers, 
but one whicli always strikes me freshly as a note of 
foi-eiun wavs. ( I wonder wliether clothiuo,' so cleansed 



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38 



TRAVEL PICTURES 



would be reallv freslier than what comes home from a 
steam laundry, redolent of Javelle water!) 

In ten minutes we were clattering through the bright, 
clean, narrow streets of Echternach. Luncheon'!' It must 
wait ; our first l)usiness here is within the minster. .Vnd 
so we crossed the tiny market, its loth-century Puh/sIiiIiI . 
or town-house, contrasting oddly with the modern shops l>y 
its side, turned the corner, and st<t])])ed at the abbey gates. 
On either side are the vast luiildings that once sheltered 
the Benedictine monks who carried on St. Willibrord's 
work; l)ut, alas! there is no more a mitred Al)bot of 
Echternach, holding lordshi]) over all this region, and 
on earth are only menioj'ies of all those holy men who 
fought the good tight here uruler the liule given from 
Monte Cassino. I know not to what uses the old monas- 
tery is put now; I lia<:l not the heart to ask. But the 
uiiuster stand'^ much as it was in the thirteenth century, 
when (lothic euricliuients were added to au originally 
Romanesque church of two hundred years earlier, the 
successor of that actually built by St. Willibrord himself. 
Idle inlci'ior tlauies with red, gold, au<l blue everywhere 
on the walls; pillars and columns which alternate in the 
su])port of the roof are blazing with C(dor in a fashion 
rather trying to eyes uuaccustouied. I]ut at the end of 
the centre aisle, Ixd'ore the high altar, exquisitely white 
and delicate, is the shrine of our Saint, the pearl for 
which this casket was made. Through the marl)le tracery 
is seen the ancient stone coffin where all that is mortal 
of St. Willibrord has rested since his death, A. D. ToO. 

But, someone questions, who was he, and what s])ecial 





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FROM VIANDEN TO ECHTERNACH 



39 









ECHTERA'ACH xVBBEY, LUXEMBOURG 



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40 



TRAVEL PICTURES 




concern have we with liinj, more than wilh any other 
by-gone worthy of liis centnry 'i ]\Inch every \\'ay, I 
answer. He was of that niai'x'clloiis group of English mis- 
sionaries who, within a hiindiXMl years of iSt. Angnstine's 



^. 








wm 



SHRL.XK (_)K ST. WI LLl BKOKD. ECHTEKNACU A1;L5KV. 

coming to Kent, were re]>ro(lu('iiig in the ?soi'th the 
glorions work of the Keltic missionaries in eaiiier times. 
Made first Archl)isho]) of Ktrecht, towards the end of the 
seventh centurx', he was not eontent to settle down among 
his ])nr])les in a i-egion ;ilrea<ly won to ( 'lii'ist ;ind the 



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( 'liurcli Ity Iiiiiis(lf, hut, rctiu'iiini:' to Kiiiihiiid, cvd.'^sed 
the Xortli kSca aii'aiii, hiiidiMl al Z(_>ul('hni(li', in Walclieroii 
( wlici'c his well siill supplies the vilhiii'c with water), ;ni<l 
hcii'au the second ureat jieriod of his evaiiii(diziiiii', which 
eiideil oidv after he had .seen the fruits of his al)uudaiit 
lahonrs, aud had borne the care of all the churches in the 
hinds he had won tor the Faith. 

Ill our (hiv, when the ancient Old ('atliolic (diurch of 
Ilolhind, with its l)ranches in Gernianv, iSwitzerhind, 
Anstria, and France, is alfording a refnge for those llee- 
ing from papal despotism, it is interesting to note that 
the society recently foiMued to cultivate better acqnaintance 
Ix'tween Anglo-( 'atholics and Old C-atholics bears his 
name: the Society of St. AVillibrord. And I trust that 
many who read this letter will desire to become members 
of the American branch, and will connnnnicate with its 
Honorary Secretary, at 2S Brimmer Street, J](.)ston. 

I suppose that Echt(^rnach is most widely known in 
connection with an extraordinary mediaeval snrvival. the 
Dancing Procession on AVhitsun-Tnesday. Thousands 
come from all the conntry ronnd ; invalids barely al)le 
to move, or othei's interceding for their sick friends; 
mothers 1)earing' delicate children in their arms; even 
cripples ; and to the music of violins, dance through the 
streets n]) to the abbey, where a solenni Tc Pcinii is sung 
in the ])resence of the Bisho]). There are (/r()f('S(iii('ncs. 
no doubt; Imt the foi (hi clifD'hoitiih'}- transfigures alb and 
those who have seen it say that tears, rather than laughter, 
are ]irovoked. 

From Fchlernach to Tnxi mbonru' is a two hours' run 



T^t^isn^/y] 



S'V^ 









TRAVEL PICTURES 

on the Cheuiiii Vicinal, thivniiii a rri^i.ni iinicli siiiiniLT 
and richer than the northern parr of the (Jraiid Duchy, 
but not so picturesque. There the tln-ough trains from 
Ostencle to Basel are reached; and I write this at forty 
miles an hour, with my face set towards the ever-varying 
yet still unchanging beauties of the high Alps. From 
there, a fresh message, doubtless. Meantime, as the com- 
plinediour draws near, Saiirfc WiUlhrorde. ova pro nobis! 






§^ 







i^i'W-. 




V. ' 

EINSIEDELN 

WE separated, gentle reader, by St. Willibrord's 
shrine in Ecbternaeh, if I remember, with a 
promise of some Alpine glimpses. Ah, if there were only 
time and space to linger with yon in the nnspeakable 
beauty of the ddniiiersee, with Niesen's ])yramid just 
across the lake from my windows, and the sharp Stock- 
horn exulting above the clouds, to the west, while Eiger 
and Monch, and the ever-glorious Jungfrau, in their 
eternal snows, shine resplendent eastward, to the sunrise, 
or glow with matchless purple radiance at sunset I We 
might go rowing together with Phyllis and Ruth, English 
(diildren with voices sweeter than the Swiss honey one 
has for breakfast, and great masses of fair haii-, and 
delightful manners, such as are meet for the (diildren of 
the clergy; or climl) u]), up to the green ])lateau of 
Sigriswil, into its church a thousand years old, clean and 
bare and desolate as an empty barn now, under the blight 
of Protestantism ; or chat with small Frieda Stern, aged 
eleven, the eldest of seven, and playing mother to all the 
I'cst in the ])easantdionie by Aeschlen. while the real 
mother lies ill, nnder two feather-beds by way of comfort. 
We niiuht visit Sr. P)eatns' li'rotto, overhanging the lake. 









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'MM 



'#^S^y^:^vH<^\^iS^3^^^«S^ 





where ;iii aliiiosi lifelike iiiiaiie of the heniiH 
ill iiie<lirati(iii, ;m<l tlie custoiliau opens a i'o('k-h( wii iirax'O 
W'liei'e se\-eral sl;( letoiis repose in ronfiisioH, and remarks 
casnalJy : "One of these is Heatns ; we don't know whieh/' 

But the hake of Idinn is doulitless wcdl-known to 
many of yon: |»ei'ha])s yon ha\'e e\-en lingered in the eool 
arcades of the j^'arden hy Gnnten, which is my Swiss home, 
with the malachite of the waters at your feet and gentle 
sixteen-year-ohl Marguerite talking in fonr or fi\-e langna- 
ges by yonr side. So, reluctantly, I turn away from all 
that I'egion, to lake yon with me into less familiar corners 
of this divinely })lanned playground foi' the civiliz((l 
world. 

C*om(% then, let ns' go on ])ilgrimage once more, this 
time to Einsiedeln and St. Gallon. 

I had heen sailing on the Lake of Lnzern all day, 
lifting n]) my eyes nnto its mountains and praising God 
for sncli s])lendonr of beanty; with a visit to Tcdbs cha])el 
and t(t the great Tell Monnment at Altdorf l;)esides. (Of 
Course yon beliex'e that legend, Avhich has become so mnch 
a part of evt'ry Switzer's inheritance. 1 don't mean to 
play modernist and argne that it is as good as true, 
thongh it never happened: I really <]<» hold it for history, 
Baedeker to the contrary notwithstanding. It is too good 
not to be true!) But at live o'tdock I took train at 
Fliielen, and, after tAvo changes, found mystdf at the end 
of a tiny branch-liiie, in an am]»hitlieatrt'-vallev far abcive 
the Bake of Ziirich, with the great bells of the Al)bey of 
fr% Onr Lad\' of Binsiedeln boominu' out their call to lU'aver, 




■:J^'v'-iD 




EINSIEDELN 










one aiiioiiu' the two lunidivd iliinisaiui pilgriius tliat cimif 
rlici'c cverv year. 

li was a l(iii,a,(r jouriicv than the two hours in a 
comfoi'taMo railway carriaiiv ; I hcii'au to realize that, as 
I looke<l r(.»mi(l luv exquisitely eleau. hare littk' room in 
the llnli'l (hi Soh'il. and saw the eiaieitix over tlic l)e(h 
with the holy-water stonp beneath it, and heard the 
hearty .salutation of Phronie, the maid, "Griiss tloll," 
whiidi echoes over all Geruian-Catholic Switzerland its 
eheerful })iety. 1 was l)aek a thousand years and more, 
with ( 'ount .Meiurad oi Sulgen, who l»uilt here a tiny 
(diureh to sludter an image of onr J^(jrd in His AEotlier's 
arms, with the Benedictine hermits (E'msiedler) who 
gu.arde(l it after his death, A. 1 ). Sill, and with all that 
long ])roeession of holy sonls which has marched np from 
the Alpbach to the shrine, connnemorating the Incarnation 
as they went. For here, though the glory of the Prince- 
Ahhots has ])assed, and the sword is no longer l)orne with 
the crosier, as it nsed to l)e hy Emperor Pndolf's decree 
in 1274, the (dd spirit i-emains: whatever paste jewels 
may he set therein, the hne gold <d' childlike, earnest 
faith in God Incarnate, AVhose delights are among the 
sons of men, shines bright and pnre. 

After dinner I went across the great o])en place before 
the Abl)ey, ])ast the Virgin's Fountain, (dind)ed tlu^ steps, 
an<l went in. I'here. jusi inside rhe (fiors. is a lilack 
markle cdiapel, enclosed in an ir(.»n grating: and within, 
adorned Avith jewels and gorgeous vestiuents, is the inuige. 
] wish T eould honestly say I was moved to religious 
feidinu'. i ac('( |)t the Seventh Ecumenical ("onncil, cv 



i><y>'^4^ 







TRAVEL PICTURES 

ammo, and iihlior the Iconoclastic heresy fervently, as 
savonring of Islam. Btit I ninst frankly own that, in 
itself, this grotesqnely ugly doll, Mack with age and 
preposterous in its attire, revolted nie ; and the conntless 
ex votos hung round the shrine only added to the painful 
impression. Still, when I saw the rapt faces of the 
crowds that were kneeling in the shadowy minster, heard 
the inarticulate murmur of their prayers, and saw the 
endless stream of penitents going into the chapel of the 
Confessionals, I remembered that God brings good even 
out of the foolishness of men, moving mysteriously ; and 
when I came out and saw the pilgrims solemnly drinking, 
as if in some sacramental rite, from each of the fourteen 
jets that stream out of the Virgin's Fountain, I forgot 
to be critical, and drank too ! 

The Abbey buildings are vast and baroque, erected 
early in the eighteenth century upon old foundations, and 
as bad architecturally as one would expect from that 
period. Interiorly, the abbey church suggests St. Peter's, 
Rome : and one who dislikes that monstrous private chapel 
of the Western Patriarch as heartily as I do, could hardly 
utter a severer criticism. But when I entered it Sunday 
morning at nine, for the sermon which ]u'ecedes the High 
Mass at 9 :30, and found it packed to the doors with 
thousands of eager listeners, it seemed very much holier 
than St. Peter's ever did. The preacher was a young 
Benedictine, in his black habit (the (U-iginal of the black' 
preaching-gown so dear to old-fashioned Evangelicals), 
and he extolled God's goodness in ordaining the salvation 
of the world by beinc; bom of a woman, accordino- to 



^WJ2 



rf' 






the licsli. Tlicu Ctiiiic a diiiiiiticMl, sratcdv cclchrarioii of 
the llolv ^Mysteries, a l»('ar<l('(| monk celebrating, with the 
jjropei' ministers; and when I went out, an honr hiter, 
over my arm the necessary camp-chair provided by all 
the inns for their guests, I was conscious that Einsiedelu 
is indee(l holy ground. 

The abbey stands three thousand feet above sea; and 
back of it is a hill, with pastures and forests, seven 
hundred feet higher. As I clindjed it, the spell of sanctity 
was on every living creature ; even the young colts, usually 
shyest of farm-ereatures, came up to a stranger's hand 
in the friendliest fashion, and the doves perched on the 
horses' shouhhn-s, as of old on St. Francis' arms. Far 
below stretched a peaceful valley, whence rose the melody 
of the Ea)}z rlrs Yarhr.<i: and as the sun reached the 
zenith, and the Aih/cIiis rang out from the abbey tow^ers, 
1 was gratefnl to Onr Lady of Kinsiedeln for having 
brouiiht me there. - 



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D(^ 'V '^0£>' ^ '\:oir'&-<^'if ^fe^'VSG*' V '^»C^ V ^:CCi' XT 



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VI. 
ST. GALL AND APPENZELL 

JOT^I^XK^'I^'(i IV.mi Einsicdeln to St. (lallcii, one 
]);i-->(s llic liiulit at Ziirirh, distvessiiiiiiy iiKxlcrn in 
its s1ji)\\' (iiiail( iv^, hut a-; iiKMlia/val as cuie jlcimIs, if oiilv lie 
kni)A\-^ w'lici-c ii> wandi r — thonii;h, alas! with ass(K'ia,ti()ns 
sadly (liiF(i'(iit from those of Einsiedeln. Fi-oiu my six- 
hnndi-(';l-y( ai'-old cast hk nt in the Hotel of the Sword I 
looked out aci'oss llic ( iik raid Limniat to the (li-ossin iiiislcr, 
eight centnries old, aii<l now revered by some as the plaee 
where Zwiiiuli miiiistirid error till his d( atli. lint there 
are (jiiaiiit old sireets winding ronnd the Liiideuhof. 
where n:>lhiuu' 1km ehauuc(l for thrt e liiiiidre(l yenrs, if 
one lniow-< wIk re lo fiixl them: and I modestly acknowl- 
edge an iiistiiiet foi' such ([narters that iie\'( r faifs me. 
However, cities in summer are no ])lace for a pilgrim, 
if they he l>iu and Imstling and self-coiHcions ; so 1 hur- 
ritd away as fast a^ 1 cordd ti) St. (ralh n, o\'er!ookini;' 
Lake CNaistanee : 

"(iiii 1(11111(1 with I'uggt'ct iiKiiuitaiiis 
The fair L;ikp Constance lies: 
in licv hliic lifuit reflected ' 

Sliiiie hack file starry sl^ies." 

The SAveetest \'oice 1 (-\'( r heard ns( d to recite those 
verses to me thirt\- \( ars a^n; and now it sinu's the new 



c^-V^(^V^c 










TRAVEL PICTURES 



y^^X 



Vae 



song ''where, beyond these voices, there is peace.' 
mihi, dvmidium animae ■meae! 

But, at first, St. Gallen is almost disappointing. I 
don't quite know what I expected; perhaps to see good 
old Irish St. Gall wath his pet bear, as in the picture I 
cherished of him ; at any rate to find crowds of quaintly 

dressed peasants in the streets. 
Instead of which, a thriving 
town devoted to embroideries, 
v'ith Broadway addresses on 
half the factories and shops ; 
until I penetrated into the 
(Jathedral Close, and found 
myself in the library where the 
treasures are kept. 

There are no relics of St. 
(Jail; the Huns burned them, 
and it is perhaps not matter 
f(>r lamentation. But there 
are wonderful old MSS., some 
of them, in Irish i]lumination 
(Hcofficc scrlpfa. the catalogue 
says ) , going back almost to his 
time, as those of you who have read Eldcpliard will remem- 
ber ; and in a case adjoining is a magnificent collection of 
German Bibles, all dating before Martin Luther's birth! 
When I poiiit(Ml rhat out to the sweet old woman who 
showed me about, she was in an ecstasy of delight. Luther 
did not discover the Word of God to the Germans, despite 
the Protestant delusion to that effect. 





MARTIIsSTor.KL. 



i^"vVi2 







wvyv? 



vfYvr? 



Here, too, as at Eiiisicdi'ln, the wuefnl eigiilecntli 
century liad its way arebitectiirally ; and the abbey itself 
was suppressed at the l)eginning of the nineteenth, though 
the ('athedral remains. But it was really on anotlier 
errand that I eanie to St. Gallon. When I was a child, a 
certain tale that I read in a tiny book my grandmother 
gave me had a profound eli'ect on my imagination. It 
told how a good monk, jSTotger by name, a thousand years 
before, saw a man, working on the top of a high clifl", 
lose his balance, fall to the bottom, and be dashed to 
pieces; and was so moved by that dreadful sight that he 
composed at once the wonderful prayer which tlirilU 
every heart at a burial : Media vita in movie sumiis; ''In 
the midst of life we are in death." Well, that gorge is 
the Martinstobel, four miles out of St. Gallen, towards 
Rorschach : and I came to see it. 

The road winds peacefully on through orchards and 
rolling pastures, with prosperous farmsteads on either 
hand, and the lake shimmering in the distance (much 
more pastoral, this eastern Switzerland by the Bodensee, 
than the central regions) ; and I rather wondered whether 
the gorge I sought could be near by. Suddeidy, a curve 
led down a wooded slope to where a narr<:)w iron bridge 
spans a chasm a hundred feet deep, whose walls are 
vertical rock down to the pebbly stream at the bottom. 
It is nothing amazing: 1 know fifty such gorges in Xew 
York and Xew Engbnid. Switzerland is full of horrid 
])r(^ei])ices, a fall from which would be far more dranuitic 
— though no more fatal I But perhaps it is all the more 
appropriate that the good monk jSTotger should ha\'e 



,^^ 



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i^^xJ^Q:^' ^ 



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TRAVEL PICTURES 






uttered ;i universal sentiment in the presence of sudden 
death, here rather than in some more picturesque phice. 
For death is death, wherever it comes; and of whom may 
we seek fVir succour in tluit houi', save of Him Whom all 
mountains ninl hills praise, even their stones crvino- ^Vlle- 
luia^ 

I knelt to place a camera in position for some pic- 
tures. A motor-car whirled hj, a diligence rattled past 
from Heiden, a peasant drove his cart across ; no one 
know the association of the gorge but myst'lf. When 1 
tried to exphdn it to the woman at the farm al)ove, who 
gave me a glass of milk, she said, "Ja. jti. llcrrscltdfi ." and 
went her way. But I shall not forget: and I lio]»c Messed 
jSToto'er knows, and is jdeased. 




ddiere is a ])((Mdiar thrilling delight, to a person of 
academic habits and ncccssai'ily conventioual manners, in 
sallying forth buldly and alnuc, off the beaten ti-ack : no 
one kno^vs him, he kunws no one; his rank and distinc- 
tions, be they what they may, are of not the slightest 
value ; he has no fussy courier to rely on, no trusted com- 
rade Avitli \vli(»m to counsel. He must literally "g<t it 
alone," in a new world: and, to be honest, L know a man 
whose constant ejaculation under such circumstances is 
Joe Gargery's "^Yot larx!" All this is api'opos of A|»- 
penzell. I never knew anyone to go there; older ti'a\'idlers 
rather scouted my ])urpose; Swiss friends intimated it 
would 1)0 uninteresting. And yet, 1 had ratliei' rexdsit 
A])penzell-inuer-Rlio(len than Milan; I bad rather see that 
quaint old liathaus, A\-ith its dai'k cells in the attic, and 



\r-^\ 







ST. GALL AND APPENZELL 






;;AC 



1 






its rows of painted Lanclaminans back to the fifteenth cen- 
tnrj, than Buckingham Palace ; I prefer the Inn of the 
Lion, with its carpetless bedi"o<^ms and its fonr-hundred- 
year open-beamed eating-hall, to the Carlton, all crim- 
son and gold, or the Tonraine, or the St. Regis. Every- 
one to his taste, yon say: so be it. ''Me for Appenzell," 
in our vernacular. 

Appenzell is the most purely democratic canton in the 
most democratic of all states. It was divided into two 
distinct parts, Appenzell-inner-Rhoden, and Appenzell- 
ausser-Ehoden, the first Eoman Catholic, the second Prot- 
estant, in 1597: the total area is only one hundred and 
sixty square miles, with a population of seventy thousand. 
I speak here of Inner-Phoden, with its ca]iital, Appenzell, 
a village of four thousand people far up above St. Gallen, 
where all the voters of the canton meet out-of-doors, on an 
April Sunday, and deliberate on public affairs. The 
sweet-voiced little daughters of the Pathaus janitor made 
friends with me at once, as I sat under its round arches, 
and showed me all its treasures before I had been in the 
village an hour. Everywhere the people saluted me, like 
one of themselves, stranger as I was, with "Gri'iss Goit" : 
everywhere the children ran up confidently, Avith a hand 
outstretched to take mine in friendliest comradeship. And 
when, in the morning, I heard a sound of many voices, 
and looked out to see the whole village marching in ]iroces- 
sion from the parish church to the Franciscan KJ osier, 
saying thc> Posary as they went, with the gentle old 
Pfarrer bringing up the rear (the custom every Tuesday), 
I woiulered whether Arcadia were perhaps close by. (Per- 



'S^ 



w^ 




u 



haps you know the^ tale of the Denver woman, coming to 
Boston for the first time, who heard, as she drew near 
its sacred precincts, a strange, rnstling noise coming in 
at the Pnlhuan window. She asked the porter what it 
was, only to learn "It's the Boston folks turning the leaves 
of their Brownings, ma'am." AVell, I love Browning; 
but that Tuesday morning in Appenzell, or again yester- 
day by the Walensee when a whole trainload from Ein- 
siedeln passed me, all reciting the Pater Nosfrr, the Ave 
(f^ Maria, and the Credo, I wondered whether perhaps Swit- 
zerland could not teach Massachusetts even yet!) iijiiiji 
There is a distinctly different type of feature and col- fS<yY}2, 
ouring in Appenzell; much more l)lack hair, much more 
beauty of face and figure than in Ziirich, say, or pjern. 
And I shall always remember the curly-haired Annette, 
five-year-old burden-bearer, who walked hand-in-hand with 
me trustingly all the length of the town, a load of fire- 
wood in the basket bound on her tiny back; and, when the 
turbulence of our own great cities deafens me once more, 
my heart will hear and respond to her lisping "(iriiss 
Goft.'' up among the luouutains that chister r<:)und Sentis, 
in A])]M'nzeller-land. 





Tf-Ci'V)^ 







VII. 

CHUR AND LIECHTENSTEIN 

WE were S2:)eaking, a inontli ago, of the fascination 
that islands have for some of ns, apropos of 
(Jaldej. Well, there are places, seen on the map, the look 
of whose name bewitches, quite independent of any actual 
association : Drontheim, Yucatan, Palembang, Moosonee, 
Xorth Berwick Law, Bikaneer, Tallapoosa, St. Kitts, and 
a hundred others ; I have never visited any of them, uKjst 
likely never shall ; l)nt I feel drawn their way without 
knowing why. 

But here is a place out of the same list, which, ac- 
tually seen, is even more fascinating than I had fancied : 
(Jhur, capital of Graublindcn, Curia RJiaetorwm nineteen 
centuries ago, when the Romans set their ineffaceal)le 
stamp upon the eastern Alps. The hurried traveler 
knows it only as the junction for the Albula railway to 
St. Moritz ; but it is much better worth a visit than many 
places vastly more frequented, if one cares for antiquities, 
particularly of the ecclesiastical sort. ]\Iountains encircle 
it, densely clothed with evergreen, snowy summits appear- 
ing in the distance ; the Bhine flows a mile away, enriched 
by the influx of the l^lessur ; and high up on a shelf of 
rock, commaudinii' the vnllcv, ou the verv site of the 








^^M 



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CHUR AND LIECHTENSTEIN 



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Jioiiiaii cMnip, is the Episcopal Court, with the Cathedral 
of St. Lucius, the pahicc, the school and scniiuarv, aud the 
quaiut old IlofkeUercl where I have beeu lodgiug. I do 
not recall any such group of buildings with ancient, nie- 
diieval, and modern so intimately mingled. In the (Cathe- 
dral, where now men drink of the water of lif(% the 
sacristan shows one the well out of which the legionaries 
quenched their thirst before ever St. Lucius had evan- 
gelized the Rhaetians ; and there are bits of pre-Christian 
masonry in the crypt. There is a Byzantine altar, rich 
with rope-work ornamentation, in the south transe]:)t, which 
dates from about A. D. 500; au<l the main body of the 
church is at least seven centuries old. Xortli of the 
Cathedral is a Koman tower ; and another tower, to the 
west, shelters the exquisite old dining-room where guests, 
more or less distinguished, have eaten ever since the dawn 
of the sixteenth century. 

There is still a sharj) religious division between the 
literally Ilir/h Churchmen of the Episcopal ( *ourt and 
their Protestant neighbors down in the valley : for nearly 
four hundr(^d years the two sections of the city have ke])t 
their old character, just as in Llolland a solidly "Re- 
formed'' village confronts another where the Pa])acy is 
venerated jieni. con. The sacristan of the (Cathedral, 
showing me its treasures this morning, pierced through 
the superficial disguise of a blue cravat and a green 
Tyrolese hat, with a direct challenge: I'jsiic Sarrrdos, 
])()iniin'':' And when 1 denied not, lii' elmekled, and re- 
lapsing into German, said, "I can always tell: it's sonie- 
thino- about the face!" Thereafter, he dwelt even more 



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TRAVEL PICTURES 





lovingly on the relics displayed for niy edification : the 
skull and larger bones oi St. Liicins, the Irish nnssi(»nary 
^vho founded the see in the second century, all covered 
with jewels, even the eye-sockets twinkling with ghastly 
emerald and ruby eyes ; and fragments of other skeletons, 
torn from the decorous concealment of mother earth and 
now shown forth indecently, in gold and crystal caskets. 
That part of the treasury was unspeakably revolting : apart 
from any question as to the spuriousness of the relics, I 
couldn't help thinking of Mr. Venus and his sweetheart, 
in Qui- Miifiiol Friend, who "didn't wish to be regarded 
in that bony light." 

There are other objects much better worth considera- 
tion: charters signed l)y (Jharlemagne and his sons; 
splendid old vestments and altar-vessels ; wonderful 
archaic carvings ; and over all, an atmosphere of genuine 
piety, such as befits a region Christian for eighteen 
hundred years uninterruj^tedly. 

But I must set down, while they are fresh in mind, 
impressions of a tiny state even more fascinating than 
Les Grisons, and wholly one side the current of travel. 
Out-of-the-way places always draw me ; and for years I 
have had it in mind to visit the Sovereign Principality 
of Liechtenstein, which lies north of Chur. So yesterday 
I set off on foot from Sevelen, in the Rheintal, to enter 
that Paradisal region, where eight thousand people, free 
from taxes, from military burdens, and from the com- 
j)lexities of urban civilization, dwell under the benign 
and paternal rule of Fursf Johann II. von und zu Liecht- 
enstein. It sounds a little like the delicious domain of 







^"y 









Priuce Otto, as Stevenson painted it ; and the first vision 
of the great Schloss beetling over the town from its crag 
half-waj up the mountain In-ings to mind that other castle, 
so convenient for murders, described in Terence O'Rourhe, 
Gentleman Adventurer, a really thrilling ''shocker" which 
I hope you have all read. 

The Rhine, hurrying down to the Bodensee, is crossed 
by a long covered wooden bridge : at the west end Switzer- 
land guards herself from invasion by a single soldier 
with his family ; opposite, Liechtenstein is equally de- 
fended. But there was a strange ceremony necessary, if 
one would set foot on Flirst Johann's sacred soil. The 
way was barred, except for a two-foot space, Avhere a shal- 
low tin vessel rested, inch-deep Avith some aromatic liquid. 
I started to step over this; but the guard said, "]!^(>, no, 
sir, that will never do : you must walk through it, dipping 
both l)0(»ts well in." It's ill arguing with a sentry; but 
I am still wondering whether it was a sort of sacramental 
rite, or if they hope thus to keep out the microbe of repub- 
lican institutions ! 

Vaduz, the capital, is a long, white village, snuggled 
close round the l)ase of a Avooded mountain. Dominating 
it and the east bank of the Rhine for miles, the ancient 
castle of the Princes hangs almost in air, white, venerable, 
magnificent. The road winds a long way up to the castle, 
through dense forests of liirch and beech and evergreen, 
overlooking vineyards hanging heavy with purple grapes, 
and fields gay with meadow-saffron, like those Fra Angel- 
ico ]>ainted for his Paradise. Attained at last, one looks 
straight dowu on Vaduz, and sees rank on rank of the 




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Swiss mountains i-isiiii^' westward and southward until 
the snow-sunnnits blend indistinguishahlv with the clouds. 
The castle, alas ! is closed for repairs ; the Prince is in 
Vienna, at court ; but his brother, who acts as Regent, is 
encountered driving" swiftly down the mountain — a tine- 
looking man, with a noble head, to whom the villagers 
are devoted. 

There is no poverty in Liechtenstein; and that uiiudi 
more than compensates for there being no millionaires. 
Its deep valleys are not disturbed by the hoot of the 
locomotive; a pastoral people is content to remain so, 
fearing God, honouring the Prince, untroubled by tourists 
— they never had had an American before at the Lion! — 
and preserving "the constant custom of the antique world." 
Ah, if only one could carry away from the tri])le summit 
of Die Drel Sclnorsteni some balsam that coidd soothe 
overwrought nerves and lu'ing peace to aching brains in 
the midst of our turmoil ! 









GANDRIA 

IF some one were to challenge me abruptly : "Name the 
most beautiful place you have seen this summer," the 
word coming automatically to my lips would be "Gan- 
dria/' And yet few travellers would recognize the name, 
fewer could gloat over the memory of a visit there. It 
is one side the main courses of globe-trotting Americans ; 
unfashionable, simple, primitive, exquisite. 

I left Chur reluctantly, journeyed by the incredibly 
beautiful Albula railway to St. Moritz, visited all the 
Engadine, descended the Maloja Pass in a dream of 
delight, revisited Como, and crossed from Menaggio to 
Porlezza, en route for Lugano. This series of Reisehilder 
would grow endless if I tried to do justice only to those 
stages of travel named above. So I content myself with 
recounting them. But I cannot hurry past Gandria ! 

The little steamer from Porlezza sailed westward over 
the beryl-colored waters of the Lake of Lugano, into en- 
chantment. The mountains round about were unreally 
beautiful, like visions raised by wizardry. The castles 
crowning inaccessible crags, the ancient churches whose 
frescoed outer walls showed dim saints in faded glories, 
the villas seated by the water's ed^'e, washino; white feet 






in the lake, all glowed with the radiance of fairyland. Was 

it a painted curtain in yonie prodigious theatre '. Or had 

my own fancy created and projected it all, combining frag- 

\\ ^ ments of ]3ictnresqne recollections, out of art and literature 

^'^■&fzJ and travel, kaleidoscope-fashion, into one great mosaic of 

1 supernal heanty !' As I wondered, we turned northward 




GANDEIA AND THE LAKE OF LUGANO. 



to the Swiss bank, and Gandria came in sight. My heart 
thrilled with instant recognition ; I had never seen it 
before, nor heard of it, yet this was my dream-to^vn, 
familiar even in its strangeness : "the place I long had 
sought." I was not long in deciding: and soon I sat at 
home on the balcony of the Seehof, basking in the Sep- 
tember sunshine, with a panorama absolutely uiatchless 
on every side. 





Picture to yourself au almost vertical mountaiu-side, 
clothed with viuevards, olive-orchards, aud stately cypress. 
'No road traverses it ; but a narrow foot-path is cut into 
the rock or winds by the very margin of the lake. A 
great crag, the Kock of Gandria, juts out abruptly, shelter- 
ing a little town that clings and clambers up from the 

water in a tangle of red roofs, 
Avliite walls, twisting rougii- 
])aved vicoli too strait to be 
called streets, where never 
horse-hoofs have s o u n d e d. 
( 'liti'-dwellers these Gandrians 
uiight almost name them- 
selves ; and yet patches of gar- 
den glow with flowers on every 
side. The cleanly, cheerful 
inn overhangs the water, so 
that, feasting on repasts of 
which the food on the table is 
oidy a small ])art, one can 
watch the fish swimming about, 
waiting patiently for the 
crumbs they ex]ject as their 
share, and hear the ])leasant 
plash as the stalwart young seminarian, black-cassocked, 
with a blue tassel to his biretta, rows back from the other 
side of the lake, standing to his oars and facing the bow. 

Idle tiny foot-path back of ihc inn tunnels its way 
under houses, with arches ont of the crannies in which 
lizards dart back and forth. It turns sliarj) corners, nar- 




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rows so that a full-sized man grows tliouglitfiil ai 
2)ossibility (if being imprisoned, then \vi(h'ns out into a 
microscopic ptazzeffa. Sitting in the cool shade of a deep 
door-way is a radiantly smiling young girl, whom the 
camera captures before she is aware of it. But she smiles 
again on the forest iere, and allows another ])icture to be 
made, once reassured that it is not for a picture-postcard. 
Black-haired, black-eyed, soft-voiced, thoroughly Italian 
though native Swiss, I salute you, little Thea Giandxiuiui, 
blossoming in my memory as one of the flowers of 
(landria ! 

The streets of Lugano are crowded with a cosmopolitan 
multitude. Echoes of "The Merry Widow'' are heard 
from the opera h<»use, and the croupier croaks his im- 
varying "Faifes ros jcux, le jeu est fait, rleii iie ra plus.'' 
in the Kursaal. Motor-cars and tramways and Paris 
gowns and ear-rings do all they can to spoil the glory of 
the lake and the mountains rising round it. But Gandria, 
au hour's walk away, is still Arcadian, unsophisticated, 
ineffaljly virginal. I dream of returning sometime, un- 
hurried, serene, to sit pensive on the balcony of the SeeJiof 
and watch the panorama pass from dawn till dusk, at 
})eace in the midst of beauty which my experience knows 
not how to parallel. 

It was less than a day's journey from Lugano, liy the 
St. Gotthard Tunnel, to the very opposite side of Switzer- 
land, Schaftliausen, a picturesque imperial city only con- 
federate with Switzerland for three or foui- centuries, and 
preserving a <j,reat deal of its media'vai character still. 
Those who \'isit Schaftliausen are supposed to come chiefly 



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for tlio sake of the Uliiue-fall ; but, to be frank, I found 
less to interest me there, where the Rhine drops down less 
than a hundred feet under Schloss Laufen, than in the 
carved and painted house-fronts, encrusted with ornamen- 
tation, the old fortress commanding the city, and the 
eleventh-century minster where, though all else has been 
laid waste, the ancient l)cll is reverently preserved, M'ith its 

inscri}»tion that ins}>ired Schil- 
ler's "Song of the Bell" : 
"]ir(is coco, niocfiios j)Ja)i(/o, 
fiili/uca fcait(/o." 

But I remember with most 
delight the long Avalk at sun- 
set, along the left bank of the 
Bhine, with rustling l)eech- 
woods and vineyards alternat- 
ing. The road ascended stead- 
ily from Laufen; and I had it 
(piite to myself until I came 
ii])on a peasant-mother and her 
tive children, all working in 
a narrow field of potatoes be- 
tween the highway and the forest. They weren't like my 
marvellous Walcheren peasant-folk, beautiful and radiant 
and sunny ; but they had a charm of their own, shy, serious, 
pale faces l)rightening into timid, friendly smiles when 
they found that the Herrschaft could speak their language 
and liked children. They were not crushed by their bur- 
then into something like mere animalism, as the peasants 
of eastern Europe so often seem to be; and we got to be 




THE SCHILLKR, BELL, 
SCHAEFHAUSEN. 





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GANDRIA 



69 



good friends, little Hedwig Sigg and her small brothers 
and sisters, before I hurried on past Flurlingen, across 
the Rhine to my inn. After all, people are better than 
castles, or cathedrals, or cataracts ; and I never cease to 
wonder and praise God that, for all it's a fallen world, 
so much of His image shines out from the human creatures 
He has made. 



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FLANDERS AND ZEELAND 
'ERE is the last of these travel-letters, which have 
made _yoii sharers of my EiirojK'aii recollections, at 
'ast ill part, this sniiimer. ISTow, safe home and at work 

again, my mind turns 
back to the last days of 
a long and ex^inisitcly 
\'ari('(l journey, aiul I 
tind myself living over 
Low ( *onntries ex])eri- 
eiices with ])eciiliar de- 
light. 

We stopped, last 
time, at Schaffhausen. 
Picture, thereafter, a 
liasly journey l)ack t(i 
I he Thunersee, and then 
a glim])se of the I>lack 
Eorest, with Freihurg 
for a starting-point and 
warm-hearted German 
friemls for comrades. 
Ah, how gorgeous the 
cost nines, how sjdendid 
THE EOAD TO KEST. tile old miiistcr, how re- 




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FLANDERS AND ZEELAND 

freshing the balsain-perfiuned air from ilic piuc-wdod 
Treves next, with its snperl> Roman rnins, so vast tliat n 
is amazing how few traveHers see them; the viiic-clnd 
valh'v of the Moselle; the Ardennes oiu-e more; and ilu'ii, 
the Netherlands I I like to think of lielgium and Holland 
together, despite the rude divorc(^ of 1830. A common 
language, eonnnon traditions, even the meinorv (»f famih' 
qnarrels, nnd\e them seem one ])('o])|c, thouiih now nndcr 
two governments; and 
art and architecture 
have so nianv points 
of identity that no di- 
vision other than an 
;irl)iti'arv one can l)e 
nuidc. 

A little visit to 
Ghent first, under the 
])leasantest guidance : 
l/( iK'/ifc t'^unoiuie.'thh'- 
teen-year-old daughter 
of M. le C^apitaine- 
(.'omnian<]ant D., of 
the forces garris(»ning 
the ( 'itadel, is (piite an 
old friend, and her de- 
lightful parents knew 
how to nuike the glo- 
rious past of Ghent 
seem alive once more. 
Thirteen centuries old, 



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Lirtliplace of Charles ^"., adorned with magnitieent 
churches, and gnarding, in the (Cathedral of St. Bavon, as 
its chiefest treasure, "The Adoration of the Immaculate 
Lamb," by the l:)rothers Van Eyck, Ghent is well worth 
seeing; but I own that the charming family life of my 
Belgian friends there interested me UKu^e, even, than the 
gloomy majesty of the old Castle of the Counts of Flan- 




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WEST no V 



TJIK BISHOP S PALACE. 



ders. M. le Commandant was one of the first party of 
explorers to traverse the Congo, thirty-five years ago. If 
only the Congo had been left in hands like his, there would 
be no need for reform of abuses, I am sure. 

Kext, to Bruges, an hour away, for another visit to a 
Belgian household. One has not seen a country who 
knows nothing of its home life. I wish I could show you 
that stately patrician house on the Eue Baudouin Osten, 
built in 1400, where a famous Belgian scientist spends 



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FLANDERS AND ZEELAND 

his serene and godly old age, in an atmosphere of radiant 
hospitality and nnatfeeted, simple kindness snch as makes 
a traveller feel no stranger nnder that roof. Here, too, 
is another military household; for the daughter is wife 
of an oihcer of high rank, splendid to see in his uniform 
and decorations ; and Yvonne and Claire, the little daugh- 
ters, are friends of Simonne and of me. Everyone going 

to Bruges sees the 
Belfry, the Chapel 
of the Sacred 
Blood, the J\lem- 
lings in the hospi- 
tal, and the tombs 
of Charles the 
Bold and Mary of 
Burgundy ; and all 
are well worth see- 
ing. But very few 
gain entrance to 
the wonderful lace- 
school of the Sis- 
ters of the Assump- 
tion, sheltered in an old, old, peaceful convent whose 
weathered red brick cloisters show medallions of Maxi- 
milian and Mary, its founders. A habitation of peace, 
indeed ; and gentle old Soeur Leonie, standing between my 
little companions to be photographed in one of the hushed, 
snnny quadrangles, was the very impersonation of une 
honne Religieuse. Bnif/es la morte. they call it; ah, no; 
so long as charity and piety reuiain, with courtesy and 




yVOXXE AND CLAIRE 



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74 




TRAVEL PICTURES 



li<>s]»iriilit_v to strauiivrs, .Bruges will be alive far more 

ti'iily than many a I>al)ylon, city of confusion and gree(l. 

I5nt 1 mnst hurry on for a farewell picture of Wal- 

(-hcrcii. All through the suiumer, even aiuong the Alps, 

1 had been singing : 

"My lieart's in tlie Xetheil;ind,s. my lu'art is not liere : 
My heart's in the Netherlands, with Willcniina dear. 
With Willeniina Wouters, and Jannetjc and do; 
^\v lieart it is in \\'al(dierpn. wlicrcNcr I nia\' yo.'' 



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KMTTEKS IX THE SUA'. 

Whcrtd'ore, sa\'iug the 1)est for the hist, I l)et()olv: uiysclf 
once more to _M iddclhurg, across the Scheldt, and walked 
thence, eagerly, impatiently, along those wonderful roads 
to rest, every ste]> taking me out of our great busy world 
into a sweet, ohi-fashionccl Kden where onc^ almost discerns 
nnf alien hnman nature E\ervwhere 1 met familiar faces, 
smiling ont from under coif or round hat, with cheerful 
greetings and wa\'ing hands. The sky was pearly, like 



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FLANDERS AND ZEELAND 



75 



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the inside of a shell; the ail' was pleasantly salt; the 
great white farm-wagons hnnlxTcd hy on their blue 
Avheels ; and Ldiu/r Jan rained down ni(dod_v fi'oni his 
never-failing carillon, '"llonie again/' I exnlted, forget- 
ting a niinnte that my home lay across the Atlantic and 
conscions only that T w^as once more in my own \Valch(n"eii. 
At ()ostka])elle they were jnst coming ont of chnreh. 
these good ( 'ah'inistic ])easants, the men hi-st, then the 



31 



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zoutej.a^;de : st. willibroed s tow'x. 



'^SIjM women and children. Xo vacant seats there, barcdy 



^^y^ standing-room foi" late-comers; and the very fiedds ])nt on 

i| I j! a Snnday look, to harmonize with the /rci-lr-l'lcrf of the 

])easants. Beyond lay Westhove, shidtei'ed hy the dnnes, 

:^.- ^.: embowered in wondrons l)oskages of l)e<'(di and hiridi whose 

"' ' -"^ age is beyond reckoning, and girdled with a moat now as 

in the brave old days when it was the smnmer-])alaee of 

the Bishops of AFichbdlnrrg. The /h'rronni/c Kcrlr made 



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short work of Bisliop.s, alas I but Slot Wostliove still stands, 
its courts echoing to the happy voices of scores of orphans 
and waifs housed there now. 

^"istas of purple and emerald shadows stretch bound- 
lessly, it ai3pears ; but one comes at last to the high dunes, 
and Domburg, C^ity of the Temple, snuggled in behind 
them, jjeaceful and sedate, with its Roman bridge and a 
thousand Roman relics of the day when ISTehalennia was 
worshipped here. The fishermen profess to show one, 
not far out from shore, Avhite marble ruins under the sea, 
where once the Roman city stood. Let antiquarians puz- 
zle over it if they will: for me, the crash of the surf 
suffices, wdth the merry voices of the children as they 
dance in rounds along the beach. A living peasant-child 
is worth all the antiquities under the earth, me judice. 

There is a wonderfully comfortable inn on the Dom- 
burg dunes, unpretentious but renowned. Two German 
roj'alties were there incognifi when it sheltered me, to- 
gether with Dutch gentlefolk and a few Germans and 
Belgians — no Americans or English. And there I rested, 
in the fullest sense of that word, mind and body at j^eace, 
in an ideal atmosphere. 

Across the fields some miles away lies Westkapelle, 
with the highest dykes in Holland, and its strange little 
colony of J^orwegians, who have kept their blood unmixed 
and their racial ty]ie through several centuries. Beyond 
that, the dunes rising ever higher, Zoutelande hides: a 
fairyland village, all red-roofed cottages immaculately 
clean, with wheat-fields coming up to the churchyard. 
The streets are actuallv lower than the sea outside; but 





^-^^^ 




still the miraculous well of good St. Willibrord furnishes 
fresh water unfailing to the villagers, albeit not one is 
left to invoke the A230stle of Walcheren. The Protestant 
pastor, entering the village church, steps upon a stone 
bearing a carved chalice and paten, with the name of the 
last priest to lift up holv hands in that sanctuary. But 
it is idle to mourn, when Janna Dingmans and Klazina 
Wondergem are knitting in the sun, making the stockings 
which wear out so fast in the wooden shoes, and ready 
to exchange sweet civilities with their American Domine- 
friend of the year before. We climb the dunes together, 
at sunset. The children dance gaily in the bright level 
beams that gild the Scheldt, touch the tower of the old 
abhey at Middelburg with fire, and bring out of obscurity 
the mighty bulk of the ancient minster at Veere, far across 
the island. One last look over the dreamy, enchanted 
meadows ; the warm clasp of tiny fingers ; "Good-bye, dar- 
ling little friends ; don't grow up till I see you again, 
please God." Ah, though I write in a metropolitan rec- 
tory three thousand five hundred miles from Walcheren, 
it seems very near and unspeakably dear. When time and 
space have ceased to be, I want to claim its peace and 
purity and the joyanee of its children for ]iart of my 
heaven. 



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SECOND SERIES 

1911 





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WHAT hiase idiot ever said that one ocean voyage 
is nnieli like another ? I have made not a few, 
and every one has an individuality of its own, standing 
out clearly in my memory: most of them perpetual joys 
in the recollection, none of them marred by the memory 
of mal de mer, but all of them different. The last one 
has its proper character ; and though it has become his- 
tory already, it is in a special binding of its own. 

It was blistering when the good old Gaelic steamed 
down the harbor that brilliant Monday afternoon, bearing 
Sebastian and me, with two hundred other first cabin 
passengers, and uncounted "human warious" in the steer- 
age. The hot wave with which July began had just 
reached the seaboard ; indeed, it followed us more than 
half-way across, though its power was mercifully re- 
strained. But as we passed the old fort on the island, 
where the dearest figure of all waved a farewell salute, 
a breath of freshness came to us from the open sea, as if 
to soften the pain of parting ; and the days that passed 
all too quickly more than fulfilled that first promise. 
Balmy airs, seas glassy-smooth, only a little fog, and mar- 
vellously good society, made it a memorable voyage. May 



I attempt some thumb-nail sketclies of my fellow-passen- 
gers ? 

There A\'ere, first, two or three "])ersonally eoii(ln('te(r' 
parties, eliuging together in the fellowshi]) of a common 
dependenee. (Small room for individuality, when one is 
chained to a wdieel ! ) llien three professors, learned, il- 
lustrious, yet all the more heartily entering into shutHe- 
board, renuaubering how sweet it is to unbend at the 
proper tinu'. C^ambridge, Ann Arbor, Annapolis, are the 
richer for men so wisely simple. Of ])arsons, not a few. 
Several genial brethren of the Latin obedience, who, after 
a day or so of ceremonial garb, followed the pattern set 
them by the American })riests and jippeared in mufti — 
much the cooler in conse(|uence, and none the less re\'ereud. 
One of them was an Italinn, L'oiikiiki di lionia. he boasted; 
full of humour, a little (lis]»osed to feel llial the Modernists 
ha<l had too severe treatment, and smiling sardonically 
when Infallibility was mentioned, but with all the X'nlgate 
at his tongne's end to nuiintain the I'apal sense <d' Tii es 
Pciriis. Another was Irish, and greatly interested in 
hearing a C^atholicity maintained that was not Konian, 
Imt studi(»iisly declining controversy, he sai<l ; while a 
thii'd had been lu'ought u]» a Methodist, and was, in con- 
secpience violently ultramontane. Of ()ur o\vn I forl)ear 
to speak. School-girls in alMindance (alas! too many of 
them the "Daisy Millei'" type that rasps one's uer\-es. and 
makes "the American x-oiee" a ])ro\'ei'b of i'e])n>a(di) ; men 
of affairs, some (d' them illnstratiug extraordinarily that 
combination of busim^ss acumen and wide iutcdlectual 
sympathy which is so rare and so admii'able; a well-known 









luiisiciaii, whose ironic liuiiioiii' kc]il liis t;il)lc in a continnal 
ripple of appreciation; a eharniinij,' girl-gTaduate, gra- 
cious and simple and swiftly responsive, hearinii,' lier lau- 
rels and lier learning lightly, but with a face set toward 
that "dear city of C^ecrops," where still the wdse gather 
from roinid the globe to search for the secret of .Vthenian 
culture. (She, inc judice. had fonnd it already.) Oh, 
it w\as a goodly company that sat on the Gaelic's decks 
and made friends. T, who have nnudi to reniend)er in a 
singularly happy life, shall never f(n'get the discussions 
wdiich settled the affairs of Europe, fought over all the 
battles of the Ch'omwellian Rebellion, solved the social and 
industrial ])rol)lems of our own Tiepublic (or seemed at 
the moment to do so), and gave, besides, that keenest of 
intellectual delights, to w^atch the self-revelation of strong 
and well-stored minds. There were academic personages 
by the dozen, cumbered with letters after their names 
("small l:»y fJcf/i'ccs:" some malicious person might have 
quoted) ; but it is no reflecti(Ui on them to say that the 
cleverest ])artici])ant in all those tournaments of wit Avas 
a banker wdio had never had a term in colleg(\ (Of 
course, he had lived his life in Boston, wdiich nuiy ])artly 
account for it. Perhaps you know the story wdiich 
trickled out from the House of Bishops years ag(i, when 
the name of a newly-elected Bishop w^as under c(msidera- 
tion. "He is not a university graduate, T note,'' said one 
of the older prelates; "is he intellectually ecjuipped for so 
hiiih an office?" To wdiich the discerning Bishoj) of 
jMassachusetts is said to have replied : "Well, he has li\-ed 
for many years in Boston" — and was unable to linish his 



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iutended tribute, for the episcopal mirth that accepted his 
fragmentary utterance as final ! ) 

So, too, the moonlit evenings were memorable, when 
the children of all ages below eighty gathered round to 
hear ghost-stories from a priest who makes the occult a 
specialty, and can freeze your blood with tales of mystery, 
all certified authentic and told with convincing conviction. 
Even the concert Avas not stupid ; and a verse out of one 
of the songs, "A Child's Prayer," has run in my mind 
often since, because of its sweet directness : 

"Mother smacks me when I'm naughty, 
Father scolds me when I'm bad: 
But if You'll just please forgive me, 
I shall be most awf'ly glad." 

All good things come to an end, on sea or land, how- 
ever; and one fine morning Ave landed in Liverpool. 
An express train carried most of the uuAvise direct to 
London. 'Not that to leave Liverpool as fast as possible is 
unwise ; but that going straight up to toAvn is, Avhen all 
the real England Avaits — the England of lovely lanes Avith 
blossoming quickset hedges, of gray church-toAvers rising 
above thatch-roofed cottages, and mysterious forest-glades 
that survive to shoAv Avhat Broceliande must have been ; 
of rosy old men and Avomen standing by gates that open 
into Fairyland, and sAA^ee't-voiced, modest, friendly chil- 
dren so gentle and loving that one recalls the comment on 
St. BonaA^enture : "In Brother BonaA^entura, Adam seems 
never to have fallen" ; the land Avhere every day at mid- 
afternoon the tea-table magically spreads itself in some 
garden nook, and Avandering Americans who don't speak 



W^ 



tbruiigli their noses liiid hospitable hands beckoning al- 
ways throngh doorways that swing wide. Of that Eng- 
land he knows nothing who knows only London, Dr. John- 
son to the contrary notwithstanding, ^ay, more, the 
English themselves do not know it as well as we who are 
at home there and yet sufficiently detached to be objective 
in our enjoyment of it. 

All England is not like that, of course. There are 
hideous factory towns, and vulgar Suburbia, and un- 
speakably gray and squalid slums such as our cities can- 
not match, thank God; there are acres of deadly British 
respectability, peopled by British matrons and snobs of 
other sorts; and even in the country the public-house is 
the dragon of present days, with no St. George ! 

But my England, that I love ineffably, swells over the 
Sussex downs and the chalk hills of Kent, lies in the dales 
of Westmorland or among Worcester orchards, stretches 
round the Wrekin. (not forgetting Little Wenlock!), ex- 
pands in the wide fields of Hertfordshire and over the 
Yorkshire Wolds, blushes among Devon lanes, fades away 
in the misty distances of the Fens, and nestles close where 
sweet Thames runs softly. And always the centre of it 
is that venerable Mother that renews her youth like the 
eagle's, older though she is than the realm itself ; drugged 
and robbed in bygone days, threatened to-day with fresh 
violence and contumely by that base confederation of 
Babylonians, Moabites, and Hagarenes wherein Recusants, 
Dissenters, and Infidels all have their part, but still 
august, virginal, humble, and faithful, true Spouse of 
Christ for English-speaking folk in every land — the 







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Church of Alban, of Aidan, of Chad and Bedc and Hilda, 
of Dnnstan and Beeket and Kol>ort Grossetete, of John 
Ball and Langland, of Andrewes and Hooker, of Land 
and the Rojal Martyr he fortified so that out of weakness 
came strength sufficient to lay down his life for the wit- 
ness of Jesus ; the ( 'hurch of Ken and Wilson and the 
Wesleys, of Pusej and Keble and jSTeale, of Hannington 
and Patteson, of Kingsley and IMaurice, of Lowder and 
Mackonochie and Dolling — yes, and the Church of Gore 
and Winnington-Ingi'ani and Lang to-day. 

Forgive this Homeric catalogue, but my heart burns 
within me when I muse. Good old Enoland ! 



It was not to London that Sebastian and 1 turned 
our feet, you may be sure, after the adieux had all l)een 
sj^oken, and the jiromises to meet again had l)een made. 

We saw the new Cathedral rising on its height, its 
steel skeleton speaking of a true modernism even as its 
exquisite Lady Chapel, completed, witnesses to the ancient 
Faith ; we paid our respects to "Dante's Dream" and 
"Sponsa do Libano" in the Walker Gallery (joying to lind 
close by a marvellous glimpse of our own Walcheren, 
"La Vie Paysanne," by Cecil Jay Hitchcock), and then 
hurried northward to the Lakes, terra inror/niia to us both, 
except on the pages of books. 

What a contrast a few hours made I We left ugly 
scpiare miles of lousiness, tempered with an Orangemen's 
row (for it was July 12th that we landed), and found our- 
selves under the shadow of Scat Sandal, where Grasmere 





"S^ 



reflects the crags and forests that encircle it, in such com- 
fort as only a really good English inn can give. 

"Whoe'er lias travelled life's dull round. 
Whate'er his stages may have been, 
Must sigh to think he still has found 
His warmest welcome at an inn." 

So Shenstone wrote, was it not ? on a pane of the ''Red 
Lion" at Henley : excuse ever since for very, very long 
bills. I can't make the sentiment mine ; and yet I think 
I understand it. To take mine ease in mine inn : that is 
much, indeed. And I pay a debt when I praise the 
Prince of Wales Lake Hotel, by Grasmere. Try it some 
time, if you want joy and peace. 

There are many lakelets in that country (the largest 
of them small enough, judged by our standards, and none 
so lovely as those aquae refectionis that gem Central J^ew 
York or Wisconsin). But at Grasmere one has the best 
of all the Lake Country, without the travail of eland )ering 
over naked mountain-sides and through breathless, blister- 
ing passes. Keswick is too crowded and too "unco guid" ; 
besides, the mountains are not at hand there. Windermere 
is cluttered with villas ; and Trout]:)eck, charming as it is, is 
a little remote. But Grasmere is ideal. A clean village on 
a tiny stream, the Rothay, which mirrors the tower of the 
ancient parish church ( kSaxon work there, they say) ; there 
are high hills on every side, with narrow valleys widening 
out into fertile dales overhung by precipices. The lake 
itself is very small, no more than a pond, but it reflects the 
forest above it and the stern outlines of the mountains ; and 
to drift on its surface in the lone: northern twilio-ht, talk- 






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THE VOYAGE, AND GRASMERE 




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iiig of liigii tilings with cougciual fonirutk'.s, while the 
breeze acros.s the hay-lields hrings watts of incense sweeter 
than any thnrifer of earth knows, is a memorable delight. 

Wordsworth is l)uried in the ehnrchvard, close to the 
little stream ; and many people who cannot see nature 
except as described on printed pages, go to Grasmere with 
a volume of his poems in their hands and spend all their 
time identifying allusions. A very profitless occupation, 
like that of the silly people who devote themselves on 
mountain-tops to the ''panoramas" that tell you the names 
of distant peaks, instead of tilling their vision with the 
splendour of the actual prospect. I shall enjoy Words- 
worth more, in my own library, for having visited the 
scenes of which he loved to write ; but I had something 
better to do there than pore over books. Just to lie lentus 
in umbra on the hillock that rises abruptly from Squire 
Cowperthwaite's meadows on the Keswick Road, breath- 
ing the hay-harvest breeze and watching the mowers at 
their rhythmic task, was soul-filling. And when Phyllis, 
the dear small daughter of the Lancrigg gardener, divided 
the season's last box of strawberries with me by the bank of 
Dead Man's Pool (gruesomely incongruous name for a 
veritable Diana's bath), and guided me up Sour-Milk 
Force to the solemn isolation of Easedale Tarn, I was 
ready to let all poets wait till autumn and live my po<4ry 
for the time. 

Sunday morning at early Mass there was a good 
assembly of the faithful. But at half after ten came the 
tragic example of a persevering tradition. Besides the 
summer visitors, the parish congregation consisted of a 



few families of the neighhc Hiring gcntrv, the shopkeepers 
of the vilhxge, the shepherds and farm labourc^-s of the 
region, and the chihlreii. For them, Morning Prayer 
dragged its slow length along: the Psalter snng to utterly 
iri'ational Anglican chants, two long lessons, which re- 




GKAiSMEKE PARISH CHUKCIl 



quired close attention if they were to be at all understood 
by the hearers, Te Deiun and Bciwdtctiis. and the prayers 
— altogether, just under an hour. Followed a sermon by 
a dear old priest from India, who told the shepherds that 
the progress of the Brahmo and Arya Somaj was pro- 
foundly sigiiiticant, and that the Sudras and outcastes w^ere 
especially susc('])tible to Moslem influence. (I wondered 



:^>^^^^^ 






what the shej^herds got from it, true as it was!) Then 
the children, the shepherds, and most of the rest of the con- 
gregation solemnly departed, tired enough intellectually 
if thej had tried to follow all that had gone before, even as 
was the little company that remained for the Lord's own 
Service, which is the common people's service, too. Oh 
for the day when monastic offices of every degree of com- 
j^Iexity shall 1)0 duly subordinated, and our Eucharistic 
Lord shall be lifted up everywhere, drawing all men 
unto Him I 









v^ 



SHROPSHIRE, THE WELSH BORDER, AND CALDEY 

WE were talking of England in general, and of the 
Lake Conntry in particular, last time I wrote, 
and |)erliai3S you smiled at my enthusiasm. Well, let it 
be so. I repudiate indignantly the accusation of being 
Anglomaniae, l:)nt I rejoice in confessing myself Anglo- 
phile. And that in no blind, indiscriminate admiration, 
but with all due allowances for the unlovely and the blame- 
worthy; still the fact stands that every visit to England 
makes me love her better, so that I feel I have a kind of 
dual citizenship, and look at the Union Jack with a per- 
sonal pride of possession only second to what thrills me 
when the Flower-flag of the Great Republic blossoms for 
me against an alien sky. 

Travelling once across Bavaria, my neighbour was a 
charming English school-girl, daughter of an army officer 
in Guernsey, who talked of many things with the delicious 
simplicity that only Bacl'fisch possess. 

"Isn't it absiTrd V she said ; "they won't let you snap 
a kodak anywhere near the old fortifications on Guern- 
sey." 

"Afraid of spies," I said. 

"'Yes ; but they might let English and Americans, even 
if they do keep out Germans." 



;^^3^ 







TRAVEL PICTURES 

"You are wvx kind to put us in," I answered. 

"Oil, but Americans are British subjects, aren't they ?" 

I repressed a smile, and explained that that matter 
had l;)een settled in a contraiv sense some four generations 
ago. 

"Well, if they aren't, it's all the same thing. They 
are just like our own people, and we never could have a 
war, could we ?" 

"God forbid!" I answered, from a full heart. 

(Jnce upon a time, in the dark ages when our school 
histories held up "the Bridish" ( as the small boys always 
called them) to our hatred, and congressmen twisted the 
Lion's tail, with one eye on the watching A. O. IT. vote; 
when, on the other side, shops in Regent Street bore a card 
in their windows, "American custom not desired" ; an 
ill-lu'cd Englishwonuin said to an American visitor: "Oh, 
you know, we all love Americans, though we detest 
America" ; to whom came the swift retort : "Tveally ? 
With US it's the other way: we love England and detest 
the English!" 

All that, thank God, is changed now ; and though ig- 
norance, and prejudice that rests on it, still survive in 
spots, there is in effect an Anglo-American understanding 
which is, I believe, the greatest factor in the world's peace 
to-day. And the American traveller in England finds him- 
self welcomed with a cordial hospitality that must stimulate 
his best efforts to repay on his o^vn side the Atlantic. 

I wish I could write frankly and intimately about 
recent English experiences of mine ; but The Living 
Church is read there as at home, and one must not turn 



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SHROPSHIRE, THE WELSH BORDER, AND CALDEY 95 



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VALLE CRUCIS^ WEST WALL 



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his gracious hosts and dear friends into "copy" without 
leave. Still, a few impressions may j^ass unidentified, 
though I vouch for the essential accuracy of all except 
names. 

Some of the pleasantest memories of the summer 
are associated with a solid, red-brick Georgian mansion, 
standing near to the street in an ancient market-town close 
by the A¥elsh border. A beautiful garden opens behind it, 
full of roses and box hedges and children, and watched 
over by the square tower of the parish church. Town and 
church alike are named after the holy British king who 
was slain in battle near by; and devout folk to this very 
day go to drink from the wishing-well that sprang up 
where his body reposed in a little dingle sheltered from 
heathen search. Some wishes made there do come to pass : 
I know, for two years ago I wished that I might return 
again another year ! 

The good doctor has succeeded to a practice held by 
his father and his grandfather before him ; and in all the 
countryside no man, not even Lord Vyrnwy himself, is 
more respected and Ijeloved. It needs two motor-cars to 
cover his field — fortunately for his guests, since he can 
use only one at a time. And what is jollier than to explore 
unfamiliar regions, with Madame or Cecily for a guide ? 
To whirl at twilight along mysteriously winding roads, 
fragrant with the exquisite scent of linden blossoms, past 
some ruined castle whose moat serves now as the village 
duck-pond ; through tiny nameless hamlets where the cot- 
tagers come to the doors and wave friendly greetings ; 
pausing five minutes at a Rommany cauq^ to exchange 



wm 







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SHROPSHIRE, THE WELSH BORDER. AND CALDEY 97 



a Kuslifo divviis with the snake-eyed Romaniehals gathered 
round the camp-lire ; then swooping past a little mere and 
down a long vista of overarching trees beyond the Hall, 
until at last, as the shadows deepen and the fragrance of 
the bracken grows more powerful, we find ourselves back 
at Brook House door, with Jack and Monica and Philip 
to welcome us, and supper hospitably spread ; who would 
not prefer that to all that Piccadilly or Park Lane can 
offer? 

One day we devoted to Valle Crucis, by Llangollen, 
and its neighborhood ; Plas Kewydd, where the singular 
old ladies of Llangollen made their home ; Glyndwf rydwy, 
haunted by memories of Owen Glyndow^er ; the fragment 
of Dinas Bran's castle that shows for a landmark ; Chirk 
Castle, for generations the seat of an ancient family, ''long 
descended and still descending," but just now alienated 
from the name by reason of extravagance and improvi- 
dence ; the village near by, where only this very year the 
parson sent word to the congregation assembled on a week- 
day morning that there would be no service, as he was oft" 
to the hunt (I tell this tale as it was told to me) ; and so 
back in time for the very centre of all English social life, 
Tea. Pro avis et focis, translated into English, means, 
'Tor tea and plum-cake, with thin bread-and-butter" ; and 
it is not a bad translation. 



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Valle Crucis is not so commonly visited as Tintern 
or Rievaulx or Fountains ; but it is every bit as beautiful, 
in its Welsh valley, with the barren mountains behind and 
before, a barn-yard at its gate, but, within, all the lovely 




.^'vvy7 



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sadness that rli rills one in sacrod places laid waste, bnt not 
degraded fnrther. When one sees an insolent modern 
mansion bnilt by sacrilegions hands in the midst of 
monastic rnins, or, worse vet, the very walls that sheltered 
lives of nndi\dded prayer and service turned now to com- 
mon jiurposes, that is intolerable ; it is like a call to battle, 
nntil one remembers Who has said, ''Vengeance belong- 
eth nnto Me, I will recompense." But at Valle C^rucis, 
the west and east walls are almost perfect, except for the 
glass ; the abbots sleep before the mound that shows where 
the high altar stood ; the dormitory is habitable, and tables 
stand in the refectory — spread, alas ! not with such aliment 
as the Holy Rule allows, l)ut with picture-postcards. In 
the fish-pond gigantic carp splash as of old, and the east 
window is reflected ; while just at the edge of the cloister- 
garth gushes u]i a spring of such exquisite coolness and 
sweetness that one is never satisfied with drinking from 
it. Tu the midst of a land l)lighted by the dulness and 
vulgar ])o]itics to which Dissent has come, it is a comfort 
to 1)0 reminded how things used to be, under St. David's 
patronage, among the Ivymry, and how, please God. they 
shall be again, Satan and Lloyd-George to the contrary 
notwithstanding. 

One day, returning from that marvel of engineering 
skill. Lake Vyrnwy, the vast artificial lake which supplies 
Liverpool with water, we stopped for tea at the rectory of 
a remote Welsh parish. It stands just under a vertical 
hillside; and its cool water comes d()\\m from a cave in 
the mountain where some British saint (unhappily name- 
less at the moment ") was wont to retire. Lhe tinv villafije 





SHROPSHIRE, THE WELSH BORDER, AND CALDEY 99 

in the valley is wholly Welsh ; and its two hundred inhaln- 
tants turn to the rector as guide, counsellor, medical and 
legal adviser in all their troubles. Yet half of them go to 
a Calvinistic chapel. The income of the "living" is some- 
thing like £120, I believe, according to Crockford; and 
this is typical of the AVelsh Church, concerning which 
Mr. Asquith said once, years ago, in a phrase far truer 
than he realized : "The Church in Wales has laid up 
treasure here on earth ; but we will show her that she has 
it where thieves break through and steal !" 

Another afternoon we watched a function typically 
British, and full of interest every way for observant and 
sympathetic Americans ; a fete at a country-house, in hon- 
our of the Territorial Volunteer l^urses — perhaps I haven't 
their precise title, but it was something like that. Failing 
conscription, the Government is encouraging a territorial 
army, i.e., local volunteers measurably well drilled and 
equipped, to be called on in need ; and, side by side with 
that, is developing a body of trained nurses ready for field 
work should war come. Both ideas are admirable, even 
from the peacemaker's viewpoint; and this was the occa- 
sion when certificates were to be presented to the ladies 
who had passed examinations as nurses. Major-General 
Sir Dominic George, K.C.B., a veteran of the South Afri- 
can war, arrayed in all his glory, erect and so suspiciously 
slender that I heard a whisper of "stays," was the hero 
of the occasion, and spoke quite as well as soldiers usually 
do. (I made a picture of him while he paused, one hand 
extended, trying to think of a word!) Boy Scouts were 
the guard of honour ; there were races and oames, and 






TRAVEL PICTURES 





various entertainments in the handsome old house itself. 
Everybody who had sixpence was there ; and all the world 
danced merrily on the lawn, to the music of "What's the 
Use of a Pair o' Kilts V and "Yip-i-ady-i-ay." It was 
jolly and picturesque and semi-feudal, so to speak ; that is, 
no one forgot who was who, nor introduced any modern, 
levelling ideas. I smiled at one feline amenity : "Who's 
that little girl in white V I asked a new small friend of 
mine. "Do you mean the mincing minx with the curls ?" 
came the reply ! 

In the very heart of the town, back of the church, is a 
lovely meadow park, with fine trees, where sheep pasture 
and children play ; and I shall not soon forget an hour at 
sunset, with eight little friends all undcn- ten. They had 
been reading Scott and Dickens, those dear, rosy, flute- 
voiced children, and remembered, too, what they had read. 
But they were as eager for stories told viva voce as any 
youngsters at home ; and, by way of reward of merit for 
one's exercise of his small talent in that direction, escorted 
me to church in a sort of revolving galaxy. Ah, English 
children of every class and condition are adorable ! 








Adieu to Shropshire for the nonce. Of Caldey I 
have written at length heretofore, so I barely record a 
second visit to that holy isle. Just now it is in a sort of 
transition stage, with much building in progress and corre- 
sponding confusion and upset. There were more people 
about, too, as sightseers ; and one lost a little of the old 
peace. The new cha]^el is ample and dignified, and I was 
fflad to sav a Mass at one of the secular altars, accc^rding 




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SHROPSHIRE, THE WELSH BORDER, AND CALDEY 101 



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TRAVEL PICTURES 

to the American Rite. But I iiiiist own quite frankly 
that the eft'ect of the Latin Office and Liturgy (despite 
Archbishop Temple's allowance of both) seems to me alien 
and artificial. To find Mr. Riley's Guide to Those Attend- 
ing High Mass Abroad in the gallery, as an aid to intelli- 
gent worship on the part of visitors, was only less objec- 
tionable than to see, lying beside it, a volume prepared for 
use in congregations of the Papal Obedience attached to 
Roman Benedictine chapels in Enghnid. Cui hono? In 
a college, where Latin is a second mother tongue, the case 
is diif erent ; but I believe there are no university men at 
Caldey, ludiappily, except one or two of the Oblates, and 
Latin seems a sort of tour de force, a phonograph pei'form- 
ance, disedifying and exotic. I hope that, under the wise 
guidance of some episcopal visitor, two or three anomalies 
may eventually be corrected ; for, apart from them, it is 
all so good that one looks for things better yet to come. 

Why write at all ( )f London ? It is too overwhelm- 
ing ! I know it fairly well ; and whenever I am there, I 
long inexpressibly for the country. It is a pleasure, I 
acknowledge, to be greeted by the old head waiter who 
rememl)ers one's name and asks after the family ; to deal 
with the ecclesiastical tailors who make hoods for all the 
universities in the empire and who never expect to be paid 
until long after one's return to the land of one's OAvn bank 
account ; to lunch at the Savoy, and dine at the Savage 
Club, in scintillating society; to pay one's devoir to Ecce 
Ancilla Domini! and King Cophetua in the Tate Gallery; 
and to have tea in Kensington Gardens, close to Peter 






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Pan's lioiuid Pond. Bnt rlie beat of the waves on the 
Kentish shingle is better, or the rush of the oncoming tide 
across Dvmchnrch Sands, where Pollyoolj and the Lnnip 
were wont to plav, according to their veracious biographer. 
To sit in the long green avenue of shade they call "The 
Ladies' Walk," which stretches from the Marina to quaint 
old Hythe itself (one of the Cinque Ports, though fallen 
from its glory), is better than to ride in a London motor- 
bus or drive in Potten Row. There is a grand old church 
at Hythe, almost unique in the great elevation of the 
chancel; and it did me good to hear, one bright July 
Sunday, a sermon to a congregation that thronged it, on 
the absurdity of demanding "a new Christianity," as if 
historic facts like those of the Apostles' Creed could change 
with the passage of centuries into something dilferent from 
what they were at the beginning. 

I still have York to write about, and Lincolnshire, aud 
one or two other places; but I must leave them till the 
next time, I see, lest you grow weary. Meanwhile, as I 
sit on the little terrace of the tiny inn at Gandria, penning 
these w^ords while the sunset glow fades on Monte Salva- 
tore, and Lake Lugano darkens from aquamarine or 
emerald to the deep green of the jade in my own signet, 
and look up at the incredible, shadowy outlines of the 
mountains beyond Oria (poor Fogazzaro's villa ) and San 
Mamette, with the echo of sweet voices murmuring Tici- 
nese Italian close by, England seems far ofF, it is true, 
but very dear aud homelike — ojir Eughiud, who s])eak the 
English tongue and have God's C^atholic aud A])ostolic 
Church in Eno-land for our nursins; mother. 




rn 






^sM^r^^m 








LINCOLNSHIRE, ELY, ROTORUA, AND HERTFORDSHIRE 

IWlvITE from among the highest Alps, whose glisten- 
ing summits smite the skv, apparently inaccessible, all 
aivjnnd me. And so, by the law of association of con- 
traries, my mind turns back to Lincolnshire and its wide, 
dreamy expanses where sky and meadow and stnbble-field 
blend imperceptil)ly, with a wind-mill or a church-spire 
on the horizon to help one realize distances. In the midst 
of it is the ancient citadel of Lincoln, city of British, 
Romans, Saxons, and jSTormans, its acropolis still partly 
enclosed with Roman walls, and crowned with the most 
gloriously suggestive and inspiring ecclesiastical building 
in all England. Architects tell me its west front is a 
defect ; but it seems to me worthy to mark the very 
entrance into 'New Jerusalem. Surely, too, the angel-choir 
is matchless. And when one takes situation and all into 
the reckoning, with the great names that flash gemlike 
from its walls, Hugh, and Grossetete, and King, equal to 
either, it is with hushed voice and reverent step that one 
climbs the steep ascent, past the Jew's House, and through 
the arched gateway into the Close. 

Lincoln is on the main line of American travel through 
England ; and, I regret to add, the hotels show it in their 



^^ 





wretched service. Our fellow-crniiitrynieii have an un- 
happy art of spoiling English inns : they tip extravagantly 
and unintelligently ; they are democratic at the wr(jng 
time ; and one feels the difference as soon as he returns 
from l;>y-ways into the beaten track. The "White Hart" 
at Lincoln is as odious as the "Imperiar' at Ilythe is 
admirable, or the Saracen's Head at Southwell, in its own 
fashion. But one forgets pett}^ discomforts when he stands 
in the (Jathedral lil^rary before one of the original copies 
of Magna Charta and reads: Ecdesia Ajiglicaiia libera sit, 
with John's signature scrawled at the bottom. Renegade 
Englishmen indeed they must be, and forgetful of all that 
chapter in their country's history, who ( like the absurd 
"Mgr." Benson in his newest delirium of the future) 
would put once more the freedom of the island-realm at 
the feet of the Roman Pontiff, as John laid down his crown 
for Pandolf to spurn, and dream that there can be harmony 
between our blessed liberty wherewith Christ hath made 
us free and the doctrine of slavery which Boniface taught 
in the Unara Sanctmn, and which his successors have even 
dared to enlarge ! 

There are many places worth a visit in the region one 
can survey from the Cathedral towers. Epworth is not 
far away : a name that can never be heard without a thrill 
of pain at the recollection of the colossal stupidity which 
ecclesiastical dignitaries showed towards the Wesleys and 
the Methodist Revival. The old story has repeated itself 
often enough since : let Boiling's name serve for one illus- 
tration. But such launders are not a unique possession 
of the Church of Enoland. The comuiuuiou which could 




mi 




SM^ 






LINCOLNSHIRE, ELY, ROTORUA, AND HERTEORDSHIRE 107 

do iiotbiiig with Tyrrell except curse him, which hounded 
Fogazzaro to his grave, and is goiug as far as it dares to 
disgrace the illustrious Duchesne to-day, is at least as 
infatuated as ever they were who feared John AVesley's 
white heat of fervour, or suspected Dolling of being ^'un- 
safe" because the common people heard him gladly. 

So, too, Boston is only an hour away, the famous 
Stump reflected in the mirror of the Witham. Very dif- 
ferent from its great namesake is the quiet little market- 
town gathered round St. Botolph's mighty fane ; and yet 
one glows as he recognizes familiar place-names all around, 
Lynn and Waltham and many another, and thinks of the 
courage that went to the founding of the new Boston over- 
seas — courage none the less admirable because associated 
with a decadent creed of despair, and political doctrines 
in which liberty had as little place as Calvin allowed to it 
in all creation. 

Journey in another direction, still within sight of 
Lincoln's towers, and you find yourself at Newark-on-Trent 
( where King John did the one creditable act of his reign : 
I leave you to look that up !), and within walking distance 
of Kelham, the College of the Sacred Mission, where 
Father Herbert Kelly's idea continues to work, and work 
well, too, if one may judge by a hasty visit. It was there, 
three years ago, that the sunniest and most adorably boyish 
of American Bishops made a visit, first of transatlantic 
prelates so to honour the place, and endeared himself to the 
lads by talking exactly like an American in an English 
book, "guessing" and "cal'lating" and all the rest, for some 
time before thev discovered that he was "havino'' them ! 



: .rv\/yn 



V^tt:?^ V "^^(^ V '^C?' v^<5^ v\^ 




Bj the way, the beds at Kelham are made of Belgian 
blocks, cut rough-ashlar fashion: if they were only of 
asphalt, one wouldn't mind the hardness so much for the 
sake of the smoothness. (This is inferential, I confess: I 
judge wholly by the impressions made upon myself.) 




Plalf-way between Lincoln and Boston a fragment of 
masonry rises abruptly, like an isolated crag transplanted 
from some Alpine gorge. It is all that remains of Kirk- 
stead Abbey ; though a chantry chapel survives, just out- 
side the old enclosure, almost perfect but pathetically 
neglected and altogether disused. Across the fields the red 
mass of Tattershall C-astle appears ; and northward one 
sees the bright new village of Woodhall Spa, where rheu- 
matic folk resort for iodine baths and other refreshments. 
And at the third apex of a triangle one could describe, 
stands a little, peaceful Dissenting chapel, with a beautiful 
manse adjoining it, sheltered in its own lovely garden, 
and standing far back from the roads. It is not the Church 
of England alone that is "endowed" in England, though 
sacrilegious robbery is less shy of announcing its purposes 
in connection with her possessions. And here is an 
endowed chapel, two centuries old, with very few specifi- 
cations except that its "godly minister" must always be 
"of the dissenting persuasion." Presbyterian it was at its 
beginning; but by the downgrade that English and Swiss 
and ISTew England Calvinism have known, it has become 
Unitarian. Years ago tiny l)aby fingers threw open the 
manse doors to me; and ever since I have joyed in a real 
friendship, centering about Beryl and Boy, l)ut including 




LINCOLNSHIRE, ELY, ROTORUA, AND HERTFORDSHIRE 109 

the elders as well. The high mark of the hot wave, that 
England knew as well as America, came while we w^ere 
there ; and we sat all that day in the garden's green retreat, 
passive physically, but mentally active enough, since we 
discussed all imaginable themes, from ]^ew England Trans- 
cendentalism to the reasons for the slow progress of 
definitely republican ideas in England, with an occasional 
lapse into polemics, that always ended irenically. But 
one very clear conclusion was reached : that those English 
('hurchmen, clerical or lay, who hold themselves aloof 
from non-Churchmen of any shade of ^Nonconformity, d<» 
infinite harm to the Church's cause by their spiritual 
snobbery. That must be very ill-grounded orthodoxy 
which cannot meet heresy socially for fear of compromising 
itself; and the Apostolic Church needs to do something 
else to prove its apostolicity besides passing by on the 
other side. 



The Strand seethed and simmered with heat and n<:»ise 
and the smell of motor-buses one August afternoon, when 
Sebastian and I had just come up from Kent. We had 
seen the tailor and the banker, the only visits of obligation 
at that time ; and each looked at the other with an identi- 
cal resolution — to flee ! Yes, but where ? That was not 
hard to decide, and ten minutes later found us in a taxi 
bound for Liverpool Street and Ely. What a contrast ! 
The dear, sleepy little to^\m perched on its hillock in the 
midst of the Fens, with naught to disturb its silence 
except the chiming of the Cathedral bells: how peaceful 
it seemed after midmost London's ceaseless roar! There 



■}^=^^' ^t^\y ■*:flC 




ITITh 




is a peculiar charm about Ely : its pathos, as one looks at 
the marred west front where one tower has fallen, or 
notes how the stone is crumbling away in so many places ; 
its incomparable octagonal lantern, the only Gothic dome 
in existence, some one has said ; its wide meadows, the 
sheep pasturing under the very walls of the deanery ; the 
old-world bedesmen in their livery ; the reverent intelli- 
gence of the vergers (0 si sic omnes!) and the beauty of 
the services, all coml^ine to set Ely quite apart. 

Evensong came that day after sunset. The Bislio]) 
himself assisted; and we noted with delight the quaint 
ceremonial with which he and his chaplain separated from 
the rest of the ministrants, at the west end, when service 
was over. Then the verger (I remembered him from other 
years) let us wander about in the deepening shadows as 
we would, till the magic spell deepened too, and we seemed 
monks of Ely, listening for the plash of Tving (hint's oars. 

Then we passed out, wandered roiiiul the ( 'lose and 
under the arched gateway by the sch»»i»l, looked enviously 
through the l>rightly lighted windows of a darling little 
fifteenth century lialf-timl)ered house close by the ]iarish 
church, and betook ourselves to our inn and to our writing. 




I must not forget a swift journey Eon don atforded 
to the South Seas. Ever since I read Pierre Eoti's Baraliu, 
they have had a fascination for me, albeit unha]')])ily too 
far oft" to be visited in the flesh ; and Bishop Selwyn's 
Life gave me a special liking for the Maoris. So, when 
I fouud that a veritable Maori village had been trans- 
]>laute(l to She])herd's Bush aud the White City, 1 hurried 





^f- 




LINCOLNSHIRE, ELY, ROTORUA. AND HERTFORDSHIRE 1 1 1 

out as fast as possible, ignoring all the valuable informa- 
tion about the British Empire, so graphically displayed 
all over the place, and going straight to them. Fifty 
native ^ew Zealanders, under the management of a reall}' 
remarkable ]\Iaori woman, Maggie Papakura, had conu; 
over from liotorua, chief and all ; and there they were, 
dwelling in houses like their own, practising their arts, 
and singing and dancing admirably. One could not help 
imagining, as he recalled his Herman Melville, that the 
dances were somewhat modified t(j suit a new en\'ir<)n- 
ment; but they had the rhythm and swing and grace <>i' 
folk-dancing everywhere, and the singing was magnificent. 
Two small Maoris took jiossession of me titstaiilcr: one 
was nine, the chief's granddaughter ; the other, her bosom 
friend, ten. Let me record their names here : Kapc Kape 
and Fe Kaliu — sturdy brown youngsters, who spoke Eng- 
lish almost perfectly, and chattered like two very agreeable 
magpies. It pleased them to be photographed ; and Kape 
Kape said, ''O do take us rubbing noses!" So here they 
are, for your delight, saluting one another more aiifiquo. 
and chuckling as they do so. 

Fine people, these big brown brothers ! Did you ever 
hear how, in the last Maori war, when they w^ere besieg- 
ing a British fort, the return fire stopped ? They sent a 
white flag to ask the reason, and learned from some very 
much disgusted Englishmen that the ammunition was ex- 
hausted. "Oh, that's all right," came the reply, 'Sve will 
declare a truce until you can send and get a fresh supply !" 
Sportsmanlike, what ? 

It was in that same war that they were uns])eakably 



m, 





TRAVEL PICTURES 

shocked by an English attack on Sunday. "Yon taught ns 
that Sunday was a holy day," they said, "and yet yon 
make war on that day, when, in its honour, we had laid 
aside our arms !" 






A MAOKl SALl'TA'riO.X. 



A1L18(^.\. 



One day stands out quite by itself in my English 
memories of the summer. Down in Hertfordshire, not far 
from Hatfield, is a sleepy little town, with one long street 
of rose-red In-iek, weatherbeaten into almost Venetian tints. 
Far at one end, across a meadow and through a green 
tunnel of shade, stands the ancient flint church, surrounded 





LINCOLNSHIRE, ELY, ROTORUA, AND HERTFORDSHIRE 




with beeches and lindens and yews. The country round 
about is essential England: not ruggedly picturesque, nor 
monotonous, but gently varied : meadows and undulating 
stubble-fields and pastureland, with clusters of chimneys 
against the sky, showing where a farmhouse lies perdue, 
splendid hedges, and an atmosphere of peace brooding over 
the landscape. But all there to be seen is for me but the 
setting of a single jew^el: Allison! 

Allison lives in a seventeenth century house, with 
delightful rooms, broad and low and irregular, and Avith 
the right sort of books and pictures everywhere. There is 
a lovely garden, with tennis-courts, and a summer-house, 
and roses growing over trellises, and delicious shady nooks 
where easy-chairs say as plainly as can be, "Come and sit 
in us, you and Allison both !" And so sitting, one forgets 
London, an hour away, and all the rush and burthen of 
modern life ; for the gates have opened and let us through 
into fairyland, and we have the fairy princess herself for 
comrade. 

Three years ago Sebastian and I were going down from 
Oxford to Henley, regatta-week, in the little steamer. At 
Wallingford a five-year-old child came on board with her 
governess, looked the ship's company over with a serenely 
appreciative glance, and then came and sat down by us. 
"What an intelligent child!" I whispered to my com- 
panion. Thereupon she proceeded to justify that tribute, 
not only by her discretion in choosing her neighbours, but 
by the most altogether charming conversation I ever heard 
from a child: it was really conversation, too, not prattle 
or monologue. Presently she smiled confidingly : '^I think 



^^Mi 









MM 



I should be more eoiiif y on your kuee." She was, and so 
was I! As we progressed, she said: "ril tell you what 
I think : I think you're two very funny gentlemen" — but 
then, fearing she might have wounded our sensibilities, she 
hastened to add, "and I like funny gentlemen." 

We parted at Goring, sworn friends, with kisses and 
tears and smiles ; and that two hours' chance meeting with 
Allison gave me not only an enchanting memory, but a 
houseful of altogether delightful friends. Of the grown- 
ups, decorum requires that I should not speak, except to 
say that Ailison comes honestly Ijy her charm. But there 
is Leslie, twelve years old, keen on cricket, whirring past on 
his wheel like a new sort of angel ( for angels are mes- 
sengers, of course), and with his heart set on engineering. 
(Perhai:>s he will come to America some day, to study.) 
And Enid, too, a little older, but still a child in her sim- 
plicity and frank sweetness and love of stories. The 
whole three have come out of a l)ook, Fanl (did Fuonineffa. 
or TJie Would-Be-Cioods : and I think they are among the 
dearest people I kno^v in all England — which is saying 
much ! 



'^W^ 











IV. 



OF ENGLAND IN GENERAL 



IT is as hard to stoj) writing about England as it was 
actually to leave ! We bad dreamed of Norway and 
Sweden, of Sclileswig and even of Petersburg; but why 
wander so far afield, a summer like this, when all England 
was a garden full of sunshine, and the rains had forgotten 
how to fall ? So we lingered ; and so I must still set down 
recollections that come back to me vividly present even 
here in my beloved Oberland, by the Thunersee. 

Everyone everywhere talked politics, until Parliament 
adjourned. Would the Lords surrender? Had Asquith 
guarantees ? Who would take a puppet peerage if worse 
came to worst ? Those questions echoed on all sides ; and 
often American opinions were asked, with the thought that 
the judgment of a detached on-looker might be unpreju- 
diced at least. I have seen in American papers the triumph 
of Mr. Asquith's Parliament Bill acclaimed as a victory 
for the cause of progress and freedom ; but, frankly, I 
venture to doubt whether true freedom, based on law, has 
been advanced in the slightest by putting absolute ]>(nver 
into the hands of a partisan majority in the House of 
Commons. It means single chamber government, with no 
checks or revisions ; and few despotisms are more terrible. 



Vi?'^ 







mmrrmm 




TRAVEL PICTURES 

With us, a. bill, after ^^assiiig the popular chamber, must 
also pass the Senate. It must then receive the President's 
approval, or, failing that, be passed again by a two-thirds 
majority in both houses. And even then, should the 
Supreme Court declare it unconstitutional, it goes to the 
rubbish-heap. 

jSTow, in England, the King's veto is wholly obsolete; 
since there is no written constitution, the courts cannot 
rule an act of Parliament unconstitutional ; and the new 
Parliament Bill takes away every vestige of real authority 
from the House of Lords. A grave condition, surely ; 
and one who looks at Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd-George, and 
Mr. Winston Churchill must wonder not a little whether 
such a triumvirate ought to be trusted with al)solute 
power. 

Of course every one, even Lord Lansdowne, acknowl- 
edges that the House of Lords needs reconstruction. It 
has all the defects of our Senate, with none of its virtues, 
and then some defects of its own. There is no glamour of 
!N^orman blood and long descent about the "Beerage" ; the 
presence of Jewish bankers is certainly a change from 
Plantagenet days ; indubitably titles are bought and sold 
in a fashion so shameless as to put our senatorial scandals 
quite into obscurity ; and the wicked selfishness which 
refused to let land bear its proper share of taxation and 
resented increased liquor taxes, because land and "the 
Trade" are so largely controlled by the nobility, was evi- 
dence that some change must come. But I believe Mr. 
Asquith's change is for the worse ; and I honoured Lord 
Huah Cecil in the Commons and Lord Halifax and the 






l^^^^^J^ 



^Ci^ xr <aos>' V ^« ^'-~q^ Xf ~<:d^K'^^ V ^<oQ:i> V^c 



OF ENGLAND IN GENERAL 



117 m^. 



- 1 Duke of iSTewcastle in the Lords, with the other irrecon- 

cilables, who opposed it to the hist. Yet, if such a scene 
^r^, of frenzied disorder as marked ]\Ir. Asquith's declaration 
ir"|~|l of j)olicy in the Commons had, by any incredible chance, 
^^ByCr occurred in our Congress, the Saturday Re r lew would 
-^^'yr have sneered elaborately at American barbarism ; and 
when I looked down from the gallery during the Chan- 
cellor's speech in defence of payment of members, and ^ 
saw Austen Chamberlain and several other members loll- 
ing on the front benches with their feet on the table where 
the mace rests, at least as high as their heads, I thought 
of how such indecent vulgarity would be frowned on in 
any American legislative body, and wondered ! 

That same speech, by the way, was a marvel. I do 
not admire or respect Mr. Lloyd-George : I believe him a 
dangerous demagogue of a most jDci'nicious type. But I 
never heard a better presentation of a case, nor a more ^^ 
complete and overwhelming summary of answers to all ob- 
jections. It was a triumph of art, used, as I think, on the 
right side then, but equally availalde on the wi-ong. I 
heard of a good old Dissenting deacon in Wales who re- 
nounced Dissent and Liberalism together at the last elec- 
tion when he heard Mr. Lloyd-George say, in the chapel 
itself, that whoever voted the Conservative ticket ought ^\7%, 
to have his ris;ht hand withered ! 



Happily, it is not very far from the Houses of Par- 
liament to the Tate Gallery; and what a rest it is to stand 
before King Cophefaa and the Berjgar-Maid, or Ecce 
Ancilla Domini! Some of the pictures there delight me 



^S^ 



more than any "old masters" (certain Botticellis ex- 
ce])ted). Three years ago I had been spending all the 
afternoon there, and came out, absolutely in need of the 
society of children. The Millbank Gardens were full of 
them — all dirty, alas ! But at the very end sat a dear lit- 
tle ten-year-old, playing mother to a baby sister: immacu- 
late, though her pinafore was mended and her hat some- 
thing of an heirloom. We fell into conversation directly, 
of a personal sort. Alice, I learned, was the daughter of a 
BajDtist Bible-woman ; she loved stories, but only if they 
were true or had a moral — which had, I thought, a dis- 
senting flavour ; her brother was in Saskatchewan, and her 
father was dead; and she lived in Landseer Buildings, just 
])a('k of the Gallery. We hit it off, I may say, rather well, 
and have been friends ever since — though T rememlier 
her niiive horror at my 'Agoing to a monastery" once, when 
she walked with me to St. Edward's House, Westminster, 
and her fear that something might happen to me there, 
only partly allayed by the sight of the smiling Cowley 
Father who let me in. Alice and I visited the Tate Gal- 
lery together this summer on her fourteenth birthday. 
She knew all the pictures a])preciatively, understood why 
she like<l some more than others, and was altogether as 
sympathetic a companion as one could ha^'e desired. Ah, 
it is not alone in "the u]iper classes" that one finds charm 
and couii'enialitv. 



I am saving York for a special letter all by itself, as 
befits a metropolitical see ; and there are many other 
places, up and down the realm, fr(^m iSTewcastle to the 




OF ENGLAND IN GENERAL 

Isle of Wight, about which I should like to say much but 
which, alas ! I must pass over. If I could make you feel 
the charm of Hursley on a bright Sunday morning, with 
the spirit of the Christian Year and Lyra Innoceiifium 
still blessing the place ; or transcribe the old-world charm 
of Sussex, where red-roofed villages hide themselves in 
Ashdown Forest, only to be revealed to sympathetic search ; 
or show you Bemerton, across the fields from Salisbury, 
still fragrant with the memory of holy George Plerbert, 
the rectory that he built still standing, over the way from 
the tiny old church, it would be worth the trying. Even 
to go (jut to Hampton Court together might not be tedious ; 
and to visit East Gr instead, where the most wonderful 
and inspiring of English Churchmen in the last generation 
lived and died (John Mason ISTeale, of course), and see 
Sackville College and St. Margaret's C-onvent once more, 
would be unmixed delight. But these and fifty others 
must wait till another summer ; while, instead, I record 
some general impressions of travel in England, such as 
American travellers utter among themselves, "talking 
things over" on the steamer's deck homeward l:)ound. 

Railway travel costs about the same in England as in 
America, comparing third-class with ordinary day-coach 
rates. The railway stations are usually better than ours, 
and more convenient — those in London, and s]3ecially 
Charing Cross, being notable exceptions. One great point 
is that the platforms are on the level of the carriages, with- 
out that long stej) up which is so exasperating in our sta- 
tions ; and it is an inexpressible comfort to find cheerful, 
civil, honest, and oliliging porters everywhere, who do 



S'^C 







V "^o^ V ^«o^ V ■■^i^' V ^iio i^' \? ^5-;5feci^' tr '^Qssiscs^' V ■•<oQi^ v xsc*'' XT -ioti^' v' '<soQ*' Xr' ^o;^' u 









TRAVEL PICTURES 

their work well and expect small tips. (If ever you of- 
fered a black jDorter at the Grand Central Station any- 
thing less than a quarter, you will appreciate the contrast.) 

The trains themselves, however, are not so comfortable 
as ours, on the whole. Leaving out the "stopping trains," 
so-called, with the old-fashioned carriages where each com- 
partment is separate from all the others, even the cor- 
ridor coaches are badly ventilated; and to sit vis-d-vis to 
a stranger, in that limited space, knees almost touching, 
is altogether too intimate. If you can have a whole com- 
partment to yourself, or to yourself and your own com- 
panions, it is very jolly. But the desperate endeavours to 
find a vacant place in a crowded train make our open day- 
coaches seem desirable, and our Pidlman cars, Avith chairs 
reserved, ideally luxurious. 

Broadly speaking, every public servant in England is 
polite and obliging. ( There are exceptions, of course : the 
young women at hotel desks, for example, cultivate the 
most wanton insolence, even as in Dickens' day the attend- 
ants at railway restaurants seem to have been of the same 
type — witness, "Mugby Junction.") The pleasant voices 
have much to do with it, I think. If I were president 
of the l^ational Educational Association, I would urge on 
my fellows in that august body the cultivation of the 
speaking voices of their pupils as inlinitely more im|)or- 
tant than any text-book subject in the school curriculum, 
More than most people, perhaps, I am affected by the 
(piality of voices; and sweet, well-modidarcd tones of sales- 
men, and cabmen, and waiters are vei'v agreeable after the 






rwv2:2 











wm 



m^ 



^ 



C^V -iv 






harsh, snorting, nasal utterances too often heard from 
American lips. 

English hotels are not so thoroughly equipped as ours 
with modern conveniences, I staid at a grand new hotel 
in London, w^hich made a great point of having running 
hot and cold water in its bedrooms, but had left out the 
telephone which even third-class houses at home put into 
every room. So, the lifts are small and slow ; and there 
are still places where you are expected to walk down, and 
only ride up. But the service is generally good ; and at 
the best London hotels the food is admirable and much 
cheaper than in houses of similar grade with us. In the 
country one misses fruit and a variety of vegetables ; and, 
while English tea is always good, there are very few Eng- 
lish people who know anything about drinkable coffee. I 
wonder why ! 

One ancient grievance Americans must suffer is the 
lack of American news in the English papers. The best 
of the English dailies are poor enough, compared with our 
best ; and in them one looks in vain for more than the j!^ew 
York stock-market reports, a lynching in Alal)ama — or 
Pennsylvania, perhaps, alas ! — and a divorce in the smart 
set. It is exasperating, really, and inexcusable in these 
days. So I must acknowledge that the English Church 
weeklies seem inferior to ours, mechanically and by the 
standard of interest. They lack illustrations, and the 
paper on which they are printed is poor stuff" ; while the 
enormous space allotted to political matters of a partisan 
sort, and to discussions as to whether a silk chalice-veil 



V '-OO- V ^:3if-' u -OQ 





comes under the (3riiaiiients Riibric (>r not, seem dispro- 
portionate. 

Of English people 1 have already said much, mostly 
in praise and affection. I think they are slower every 
way than Americans; that is one reason why it is such a 
delightful rest for an American t<> go to England. They 
think of themselves as cold and unemotional ; hut my ex- 
perience shows them (once the ice is broken) as far 
warmer and more sentimental, in the good sense, than we 
are, usually. They still condescend to the rest of man- 
kind, unconsciously, no doubt ; but they are only more open 
about it than other peoples, who all have the same idea of 
their own superiority to every other race. Even Ameri- 
cans are not wholly free from it, I fear ; though all except 
the nearly extinct "spread-eagle" variety are tactful enough 
not to display the feeling inopportunely, while Englishmen 
have need to cultivate tact beyond almost all else they need. 

However, when all is said, they are our nearest neigh- 
bours, if one reckons proximity by ideals, not by kilo- 
meters: they are the most satisfactory, if also sometimes 
the most exasperating, peo])le in the Eastern Hemisphere. 
So I end as once before: (lood old Eiiiiland! 



^:?^ 





I PROMISED a glimpse of York before we should cross 
the Channel together : so here it is. Bnt as yon read it 
yon will realize that it was prepared for English eyes 
first. Sebastian and I were bidden to ''the Residence" by 
the most hospital )le and enthnsiastic <»f Cathedral clergy, 
early in Angust ; and when we made onr departure it was 
proposed that "An Impression of York" be written for 
the Diocesan Gazette by one of the American visitors. Of 
course one had to suppress much he woidd have liked to 
say, for fear of being too personal. But, as it stands on 
the English pages, you shall have it, with certain pictures 
from mv own camera added. 



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AN IMPRESSION OF YORK. 

When one sees the hurrying traveller point his kodak 
at the vast front of some august Cathedral for a snap- 
shot, the incongruity brings a smile. Painters and etchers 
have toiled long to reproduce adequate pictures of that 
mighty fane ; and here is one who hopes to succeed with 
a lens, a film, and one-hundredth of a second ! But, after 
all, though a sna]>shot does not equal the artist's picture 
produced with laborious exactitude and sympathetic vision, 



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it has a certain value oi its own, for the maker of it at 
least; and sometimes the camera shows details that the 
painter overlooks ; all of which is an apology for this arti- 
cle, written by command of a hospitable dignitary. 

Mark Tapley comments upon the name of Xew York 
as doubtless given because it was so exactly unlike Old 
York ! (Jne reason why Americans flock to Old York is 
that it is so different from what we have at home. A walled 
city, with Roman remains, where a castle still shelters 
soldiers ; narrow streets whose anti(pie house-fronts incline 
towards each other as if bent beneath the weight of years ; 
a ruined abbey ( which one of our great architects calls the 
most ideal in England) ; and a thousand memories evoked 
by the mere name, from British Evrauc down to White 
Rose times, and the holy martyred sovereign who bore so 
long the title Duke of York: America has nothing like 
that. But to an American Catholic, York is the Minster 
chiefly, seat of the northern Metropolitan ; and his feet 
carry him there first ni all, even as he thinks of every- 
thing else in relation thereto. Years ago I made my 
flrst visit to York, kneeling in the choir Ix'tween the two 
dearest and best of comrades; and as we walked round 
the walls in the sunset glory, it was always towards the 
Minster that we turner I our faces, conscious of our own part 
in it as iidieritors of the faith of Paulinus and Wilfrid, 
of William and Wolsey. When a civil vicar opened the 
gate of his garden and showed ns that there were Roman 
tiles l)uilt up in that ])ortion of the wall which enclosed it, 
we envied him his aiu/idum cum, lihro more than his liv- 
ing; and it was ])leasant at night, lodged in Petergate, to 



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liear the Minster bells sounding the hours and to fancy 
what ears had heard that melody since first it ])egan to 
peal. In memory of that lirst visit, a large picture of the 
(Cathedral hangs in my entrance hall, with an old print 
of St. Margaret's, Walmgate, for companion ; and in 
dreams I see the red-tiled roofs of the ancient city and 
its encircling walls. 

But it is quite a different point of view to find oneself 
at home inside the Residence garden ; to look out from 
bedroom windows upon the great central tower in the glory 
of early morning; and to note a recognizing gleam in the 
verger's eye as he shows one to the same stall day by day. 
While I I'oiirrange my memories of a happy week, I find 
certain pictures standing out most clearly. Verus decanus 
incessii patuit. The grave, sweet, reverent stateliness of 
that gracious and venerable figure, for a generation pre- 
siding among his brethren under the crossed keys of St. 
Peter, is not to be forgotten, whether seen crossing the 
greensward, or worshipping at the altar, or delighting his 
guests with recollections of all the notables for half a 
century at the Deanery dinner table. Our Deans for the 
most part are hustling young men, wIk) combine a dozen 
executive functions, and have small leisure for study. It 
must be so; and yet one envies the (dder order a little. 

But mere tradition is not always admirabl(\ When 
David put the Ark of God u])on a cart he was following 
the tradition of Philistia ; but he should have gone further 
back to the "Ornaments Rubric" of Mosaic times. So, I 
confess, I m(»urn a little at High Matins as the most con- 
spicuous (not the chief) service, whether on week-days 






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AN IMPRESSION OF YORK 127 



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THE SHAMBLES^ YORK. 



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or Sundays. Admirable as a monastic exercise, it is too 
complicated, too long-drawn, demands too much intellect- 
ual attention ever to be a service for the people. A long 
selection from the Psalter (specially when sung to Angli- 
can chants that the congregation can never learn) and two 
long lessons, with the canticles and the anthem, put a 
strain upon the attention even of the clergy. What, then, 
of the average layman, literate or otherwise 'i It is much 
that the daily Eucharist has its place at the Minster and 
in so many parish churches under its shadow ; but what 
a cause for joy when the choir shall be crowded at the 
Lord's own Service, and the Pure Offering be offered with 
all the proper accessories of glory and beauty ! 

Americans are sometimes reproached as too utilitarian ; 
unjustly, I believe, since, more than any other visitors to 
England's shrines, they are moved by the sentiment of 
the place. But dulce and utile can be comluned; and we 
do grieve when we find them separated. I confess that it 
seemed a pity to find the glorious nave of the Minster so 
little used, except as a show-place of ancient glass and 
carving ; and I wondered whether the C*athedral clergy 
might not take turns, twice a day, in telling something 
of the spiritual significance of all to the crowds of visitors, 
making the circuit of the nave, and ending with an appeal 
that those who visit the material fabric should seek to be 
upbuilt in the spiritual edifice, which is God's building. 

Almijst more than the Minster the old parish churches 
moved me. St. Margaret's, Walmgate, set amid such 
poverty as my own country knows not auywdiere ; Holy 
Trinity, Goodramgate, almost deserted, yet with a sunny- 



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faced little girl pluyiiig on the hit of gra.s.s that .shows 
green among the tumbling tombstones, and kneeling with 
me in ready, confident friendship, Ix'fore the altar within; 
Holy Trinity, Micklegate, St. Martin-cum-Gregory — those 
and others stand out vividly in my memory. Yet more 
clearly 1 recall the ride in the Sunday afternoon peace 
over to Xun-Monkton, the remote little village, with its 
deserted mansion (haunted, so they told us, by the 
murdered Cavaliers whose execution its giirden saw ) and 
its exquisite thirteenth century chtirch, so admirably pre- 
served as to be, not a monument of something dead and 
buried, but a living centre of spiritual forces. Perhaps 
for the first time in all its seven hundred years, it echoed 
to American voices from lectern and pul])it. The preacher 
will not forget the occasion, whether the hearers remember 
his sermon or not. So, too, stands out the walk across 
green fields to Bishopthorpe, the cheerful ferrywoman 
volunteering much information about " Ms Grace," and 
the young footman reciting his tale with special emphasis 
upon the romantic history of that Archbishop who was a 
tailor's son, and "whose father got money enough together 
to get him ordained" ! 

English people have a habit of dispraising themselves 
as cold and formal and reserved. Some of them may be; 
but those I know are all of the other sort, and York added 
many to my gallery of warmdiearted, coi-dial, unconven- 
tional English acquaintances. (Perhaps they reserve all 
their austerity for one another, and show their best selves 
to Americans; though I confess it is a little daunting to 
be told: 'Tveallv, I should never have thouu'lit vou were 



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ail American; you doiTt talk tlii'(jugii vour nose!'' As if 
^^yv)^ one were to say: "I should never have taken you for an 
Engiishinaii ; you don't drop your h'sl") But only my 
im]3ression of York has been demanded, not my im|)res- 
sion of York's inhabitants, so I forbear. Be sure, how- 
ever, that the stream of American visitors bears back to 
the Great Republic memories of every courtesy shown, 
every hospitality offered, with the hope of returning them 
when you atford the op})ortunity ; and all such ]>ersonal 
relations of friendliness help much to strengthen that 
Anglo-American understanding which, please God, shall 
become the greatest force in the world for peace and 
justice and order and freedom. 



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VI. 

WALCHEREN ONCE MORE 

FlvOM Quoenboro' to Flushing is a short day's sail; 
the jjrettj advertisement on half the hoardings in 
England shows a fine old salt spanning the distance with 
ontstretched arms. Yet it is really a longer jonrney than 
from Boston to San Francisco, even if jon connt in a 
retnrn trip by the Canadian Pacific. For the traveller 
l)asses into a land where everything seems different : archi- 
tecture, costume, language, mode of life, cookery, religion. 
Even the long avenues of wind-blown trees that stretch 
along the dykes and beside the polders still have character- 
istics of their own, as in Hobbema's famous picture of 
Middelharnis ; and the pearly lustre of the low-hanging 
clouds in the radiantly diff'used sunlight is unlike what 
one sees elsewhere. For Netherland itself is unique ; and 
Walcheren is the veritable quintessence of the Low 
Countries, "the Fleart of Holland," as TTenri Havard 
called it forty years ago. I have just finished reading the 
newest book on that inexhaustible theme, Mr. D. S. Mel- 
drum's Home Life in HoUand; and because he neglects 
Zeeland almost altogether, it lacks flavour. The beauty 
and wonder and picturesqueness of Dutch life, as T know 
it, are missing; and one chokes with statistics. If I could 










<i^v''-i^ 



WALCHEREN ONCE MORE 



133 



only translate into words that inexpressible charm which 
broods over nij enchanted isle ! Mine, I call it, in a sort 
of spiritual proprietorship ; for if appreciation is in some 
sense appropriation, no land-owner there, from the high 
well-and-nobly-born Graaf van Ter Hoog'e to the smallest 
peasant in his hocrdrry has a title more valid than that I 

carry in my heart. 

Sebastian and I once 
worked out an ideal ])lau for 
the Golden Age: to go as 
friendly ambassadors from 
America, convert the Dutch 
Queen to Old Catholicism ( the 
Dutch remnant seeming to 
lack missionary enthusiasm), 
and for our reward, to be 
made, one the Prince-Bishop 
of Walcheren, with Slot West- 
hove for palace, the other Ab- 
bot of Middelburg, the old 
abbey being rescued from base 
uses and restored to holy Ee- 
ligion. A fair dream, indeed; 
and yet perhaps the good Cal- ^ 
vinistic country-folk would not 
be so cordial as they are now to 
"the American Domines" ; the 
tiny hocriniietjes might be 
afraid of empurjded prelates 
'greeting, muxheek/' and run away and hide. 









TRAVEL PICTURES 

whereas now the paved country roads resoinid Avith the 
clatter of the Idompen as they flv to welcome ns. Iso, 
perish the thought: preferment would l)e too dearly bought 
that meant forfeiting their fritaidship. 

I have written of Walcheren heretofore ; l>ut I trust 
a twice-told tale will not weary you. There is infinite 
variety in the [)lace itself. Every bend in the road shows 
a fresh picture such as ^^ermeer alone of masters might 
have hoped to paint ; every village in the zone that girdles 
the island with je^vels has its own special beauty; every 
hour of the day gives a different effect to the meadows 
that stretch so far and peaceful, the line of sand-dunes 
north and west against the horizon, the clusters of trees 
round the farmhouses, the vivid green of the hedges. 
Lange Jcui. the mighty spire of the abbey in Middelburg, 
and the Groofc Kerlc of Veere, vast even in its desolation, 
like some prehistoric monster turned into masonry, are 
the only unchanging features. -N^ay, more, every peasant 
child smiles with an altogether individual charm, and 
clasps one's hand with a peculiar, trusting comradeship ; 
and the grave farmers touch their hats, not as a mechanical 
civility, 1)ut with real human recognition of a friend, ac- 
tual or potential. 




They tell a story of a saintly American priest who, 
after a visit to an English monastery, crossed over to 
Erance, but wrote back to the Superior that he found Paris 
very dull after (Jowley ! Reversing that, Sebastian and I 
rejoiced unspeakably, and found Walcheren very gay after 
London. The steamer touched the dock at Elushins;; we 













WALCHEREN ONCE MORE 



135 












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jDassed the customs formalities ; and a few minutes later 
found us in the electric tram bound for the island-capital. 
Progress, alas ! has come in the last two years, and laid 
its sacrilegious hand upon the old steam-tram that used 
to enter Middelburg, with the conductor walking in front 
of the engine to insure a moderate speed. But there sat 
opposite us a group of sweetly chattering meisjes, arrayed 
in the blessed peasant-dress ; and I heard a murmured 
"Thank Heaven and St. Willibrord!" Presently we 
stopped under the exquisite tower of the Gothic City Hall, 
so rich and fanciful as almost to rival that in Brussels. 
The carillon from the abbey pealed out its joyous snatch 
of "La Fille de Mme. Angot" to welcome us back; we 
hurried past Den Boer's irresistible bookshop on the 
market-place and good Jacques Frank's windows, blazing 
with such gold ornaments as enrich the peasant-dress by 
exquisite filigree, and were presently safe in the ample 
garden of the Grrand Hotel. jSTo vulgar modern "Maison 
du premier Orclre" this, as you might suppose from its 
title, but a grave, stately patrician house of the seventeenth 
century, very little altered, and most hospitable. How 
good it was to sit outside over our coffee, the air misty 
with the bells that struck the hours, and realize that Veere 
was only four miles away ! It was a true home-coming ; 
and neither of us felt alien there. 






The steamboat for Rotterdam starts at a most un- 
seasonably early hour, and reaches Veere in thirty minutes. 
But one compensation for a hurried breakfast was to see 
all the housemaids in town l)usy al>out the srlioonmal'liery. 



T-;- 









the "cleaning' up" with which every Dntch dav begins. 
"To polish Tip the handle of the big front door" (if one 
may recall a long-forgotten tag from "Pinafore") does not 
half express all that it means. Wonderfnl brass sqnirts 
send water np to the windows at the top of the honse ; 
and bare-armed servants from Goes and Kloetinge and a 
dozen other villages scrnb and rub and mop and splash 
and wipe and dry and dust and straighten in a fashion to 
put the best of our housewives to the blush, — meanwhile 
never spattering the immaculate starched whiteness of their 
caps, nor failing to smile cheerfully at the Uitlander who 
stops in admiration. "Spotless Town" has ceased to 
appear among our advertisements! Indeed, I forget what 
soap or patent cleanser it exploited. But at eight of an 
August morning, all Middelburg deserves the title. 

We had scarcely taken our places aft on the little 
steamer when a charming Dutch family appeared by our 
side : Mynheer with a crested signet, Mevrouw altogether 
in the mode de Paris, two handsome sons of 17 and 15 
and an adorable thirteen-year-old daughter, shyly uncon- 
scious of her neighbours, at first anyhow. Directly the 
whistle blew, conversation began, in irreproachable idiom- 
atic English. The gentlemen were English, evidently? 
American instead ; how interesting ! Since they were 
bound for Veere, they must be artists ? lio one else ever 
went there to stay. We pleaded not guilty, and declared 
our names and stations, adding that we had been often to 
Veere and were returning to see our friends, the children 
there. Eollowed much animated talk over a pocketful of 
my photogra]')hs (some of which you have seen here), 



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tliirteeii-year-<»l<l Frciile ^largot forgetting her shyness in 
pleased exehunatioiis. We reached the hjck — too soon, for 
the first time ! As we rose, a hospital)le voice declared : 
"Ah, you must come and visit ns at onr country-place 
near Utrecht. Promise ! It's well W(»rtli seeing, and we 
^vill take you everywhere. When can you C(»me, next 
week V 

''But you don't know us at all," I expostulated ; 
'\surely, you don't mean the invitation seriously?" 

"Yes, we do; promise that you will come, honest 
Injun !" 

The cabalistic phrase was p(jt('nt ; we pr(_»mised, made 
a hasty farewell to our nev/ friends whose names we had 
scarcely time to learn, and leaped ashore. ( At this point 
I ought to write, "To l)e continued in our next" ; for that 
in^utation opened magic doors into unknown regions, of 
which I hope to tell you much another time.) 

llow familiar it all looked! There was Zandyk, a 
tiny village stretching along the VeerscJte Weg with its 
story-and-a-half cottages from "La Maison de Haute J\Ion- 
taigne" at one end almost to the old earthworks of War- 
wick's fortifications ; Zandyk, home of Willemina and 
Janna, of Betje, Uigna, and Koos, of Gilles and Pieter, 
Willeni and Bram and Lein. In front t(»wered the huge 
church, mighty in its melancholy, the exquisite little foun- 
tain for rain-water nestling in its shadow; and over by 
the harbor rose the slender arabesque of the (^itv Hall, a 
veritable minaret, cloud-kissed and poiguautly l)eautiful. 
Br('athless, we hurried acr(»ss the lields, as if the vision 
miiiht fade like a uiirauc Ix'fore we coidd reach it. It 







"^"r'' 



WALCHEREN ONCE MORE 



"•(►()d to 1h' tr 




M}]\ no; the brown sails 
of the Ariiemiiiden fishing-boats filled the haven as of old ; 
the stately gendarme in bine nniforni salnte<l us with 
friendly recognition beaming in his eve, even as his [)eauti- 
fnl danghter knew us, too, and called a cheery greeting 
from the Stadfoidcia as we passed; the chimes tinkled 
''Ein. feste Bur;/ isf lotser Gott" with the same nnin- 
tended ritards that I watched for years ago; and when 
presently we sat in the great round room of the Toren 
overlooking the salt water, and ate and drank what brisk 
and kindly Martina set before ns, each looked at the other 
with joy unspeakal)le, and said, ''We're here again!" 



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VII. 

VEERE AND WILLEMINA 

H( )\V hriiiiit the sun shone, that glorious Sunday morn- 
ing when Oastel drove over from Veere to fetch us, 
liag and baggage, from the (comparatively) metropolitan 
spk-ndonrs of the Grand Hotel to the more congenial sim- 
plicity of our own town ! The Grermans, even the Luther- 
ans, who have small reverence for saints, always call the 
blessed Hungarian j^rincess that made Thuringia famous, 
"Darling Saint Elizabeth." Well, I say, "Darling Veere," 
and never name it without some word of love and ]n-aise. 
We jolted over the klinker, past the toll-gate, beyond 
the lines of old fortifications, now turned into smiling 
parkways, and were presently on the Veersche Weg, wind- 
ing, shady, magical, as if Freya or ISTehallenia had put a 
charm of happiness upon it for all who wend there with 
child-like hearts. Clusters of trees in the fields show where 
farm-houses are hidden, everyone imiuaculately clean, with 
its herd of l)lack-and-white cattle grazing near by, its 
well-sweep, its steep-roofed barn, and its notal)le array 
of brass or copper milk-cans, blue china, and silver or 
pewter. The big f aiuily Bible is the greatest treasure ; 
but every dweller in the house has his own — small, thick, 
sometimes with antique gold or silver clasps, and read 



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VEERE AND WILLEMINA 



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(Icvoutlv. ( 'i)iis('(iiieiitl V, tile \v;iv was llii'(>in;i'(| wirli faini- 
lies cbiircliwai'd honiid, and ou font; for (whatever iiiav 
be the cDiiditioii in other parts of Holland) yonr Wal- 
cheren hori- is a devont adherent of his Calvinistic Kcr/r, 
J / ciTonnde or Ucrcjoiincci-dc. and crowds tlie white- 
washed, gloomy sanctuaries to the doors. "Snn day-go-to- 
meeting chithes'' are a reality, too: the finest gai'ments are 
called Kcrl' Klcci- : am! the little mai<ls walk daintily in 
leather s]ip])ers with silver hnrkles, sahufs laid aside, and 
with wonderfnl gold and ])eai'l ]ien<laiits hanging hy iheii- 
temples; even as their fathers and lirothers are unwoiite(|ly 
brave in coats and hats suhtly siigucstive of Spain, and 
with golden Inittons at tlieii' throats, woi'th a month's 
wages or more, Avhile their motliers rustle in silken a|>rons, 
with a few extra ])etticoats for grandeni'. 

What a joy to be greeted hy everyone! E\-( n wdiere 
we saw nnfamiliar faeces, there \vas always the same (dieer- 
ful "Ihuj. M i/n/ircr," with perhaps a "Ph'asant weather, 
Sii','' for what George Borrow calls ''the sele of tlie day''; 
and the children never failed to wave salutations, ])erhaps 
a litth' subdued by the Sabbath stillness. Past the Cafe 
Veldzicht and the bench marking the crossway which leads 
to Cornelia van Wallenbitrg's farm, we hurried through 
Zandyk — al>solutely deserted, all its ]io]udation already at 
the Honse of God — came to the Inddge, l)etween magnifi- 
cent green hedges, ]>ansed not at the desolate mightiness of 
the huge old chnrch, but pnlled n]) on the (^)uay in fi-ont of 
"De Hoop'' Baker Rouw's hospital)le liome. The (piaint 
old Toren has only fonr bed-rooms; and those are usually 
hlled to o\'ei'flowinii- with artists and easels. But two 





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^A^C-'V 



VEERE AND WILLEMINA 143 

minutes ti'diii the liarhiiui'-iiiDurli. fnciiia,' the l)i'()\vii-sailc(l 
tisliing-boats that steal out loiiii lieforc dawn on their quest, 
nij good friend lionw opens his doors to travellers. One 
enters through the bakery itself, fragrant with all numner 
of appetizing odotirs. \"rotiw R(»tiw beams a gentle wel- 
come, Katlije smiles widely (a, missing tooth or so, such 
as one expects at seven, eni[)hasizing her smile), and 
presently one is established as a paying guest: item, one 
clean bed-room, sini])ly furnished; item, breakfast in true 
Dutch fashion, eggs, cold meats, cheese, Itrown ])read and 
white, hone\'-cake, luscuits and marmalade or jam, with 
excellent cotf ee ; item, mid-day dinner, Avith famous 
2)astries, to neglect which wounds the professional pride 
of our host; item, tea set out like a regtdar meal, at -1- or 'y ; 
item, supper, which is dinner minus one or two courses; 
item, the use of the old-fashioned comfortable front room 
on the level of the street, in common with one German 
artist, one from Australia, and two from England ; all for 
2i^ gulden a day, say a dollar! It isri't gilded luxury ; i)ut 
who would be Lucullus or Vitellius ^ ^fvsidf, T hate your 
Persian ap})aratus. 

How can one narrate the inetfable ^ Life at \"eere 
is perpetual peace, to those that love ])eace; intinitcdy 
varied, like the play of light and shade on the strong cur- 
rents sweeping through the A'eersche (iat towards the open 
sea, but as little to be re])ro(lnced by brush or ])i'n. The 
vulgar globe-trotter seldom tiuds himself so far from 
"(^ook's Tourist Agency"; and there is nothing to keep 
him should he come. But there is a veritable pageant of 




??fe,r-3";; 



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life for the open eye and the young heart. Down at the 
ferry Mynheer Schippers phiys the part of a colossal, kindly 
Charon, taking travellers of every sort over to Kanipeland. 
The broad-beamed Arnemidden fishermen saunter up and 
down the quay in their sea-boots, while the cabin-boys 
wash the dishes on deck. The learned Domino passes, 
book under arm, saluted even by the sternly uncompromis- 
ing schismatics of the Gereformeerde sect, who call him a 
^'Moderate," or something equally terrible. Yrouw Dob- 
belaar clatters round the cw-ner with a dish of green beans, 
looking, with her rosy, withered, smiling old face under 
her mutch, as if some Dutch picture of the seventeenth 
century had come alive. 

In the sewing-school one sees forty children learning 
the art of the needle (too much neglected with us, alas!), 
and is cruel enough to hold up a bag of chocolates as a 
lure. The pleasant teacher, in her Tholen flowing cap, 
nods acquiescence, and her young disciples take a lu'ief and 
informal recess, to their own delight and mine. After 
school-hours the snuill boys hang over the harbour railing 
and catch })rodigious crabs that hide between the stones 
of the ri])ra]i work. Meanwhile the other children have 
crossed over to where one or two angles of the old fortifica- 
tions jut out into the sea, and are bathing, in the scantiest 
of costumes, with abundant splashing and shrieking and 
innocent merriment. A dozen artists work silently at their 
easels, resolved on doing their best, though ready to ac- 
knowledge that the mystic charm eludes capture. iVnd 
meanwhile the American Domine wanders here and there, 
camera in hand, with an escort of honour on all sides, a 





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VEERE AND WILLEMINA 






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dozen little girls who chirrup iuei'i"il_y in tones so sweet 
that he fancies C^.")tton Mather must he wrong, and the 
language of heaven is not Hebrew l)ut Zeeuwsch. Digna 
Yerton is the flower of the new little friends: Digna. 
ten-year-old daughter <;»f the village carpenter. For the 
sake of One Who wrought in wood in Nazareth town, all 
carpentry is hallowecl hy a cleanly benediction; and Digna 
is so gentle, modest, imiocent, loving, that she would have 
been a tit playmate for the lad That learned His trade in 
Joseph's slio]). The famous American ]>a inter whose house- 
l)oat is uioored at Veere approved her as the fairest of 
my little Hock ; and she may adorn an ini]>erial gallery 
some day, all unknowing. 

But old friends must not l»e forgotten; and chiefly, 
Willemina. She is eleven now, and must work; so, all 
day long, at the end of wheat-harvest, she and hci- brother 
gleaned after the reapers, picking u]i every head of wheat 
that had fallen, till hci' apron was (piite full. Back- 
breaking work, at l»cst; but her smile was shyly sunny. 
She lifted herself u]) to greet me, and there was never a 
word of coni])laint that she could not join the frolicsome 
])arty as heretofore. Tt w^as she whose waving hand, 
three years ago, beckoned me into the magic regions of 
Zeelandish (diild-life, and I can never be sufficiently grate- 
ful to her. 

There are other AA^illeminas, though. The name is 
very conniion among the loyal peasantry. And one who 
comes to mind innne<liately is now ten years old, the eldest 
of four sisters. They live on the home farm of a great 
nobleman's estate, bv Kondekerke, where Mvnheer Dekker. 



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VEERE AND WILLEMINA 



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wille:mixa ix her dooeway. 










TRAVEL PICTURES 

their father, is head farmer ; and I wish you could see the 
exquisite neatness and propriety of everything within and 
without the farm-house. One reaches it either across the 
lields by a path so sheltered as to be almost a tunnel of 
shade, or else up the long lane from the highway, under 
over-arching elms and beeches. Either way is perfect; 
and when the four little figures stand arm-in-arm (the 
baby brother by their side) looking to see who comes, or 
run pelting down the road to greet the well-known figure 
of their friend from over-seas, it is lovelier than any scene 
in The Bluebird. Indeed, when they escorted me half- 
way to the further gate, and then returned, reluctant, turn- 
ing at every step, to wave valedictions, the gracious, rosy 
little people, in the old-world dress of the Nieuweland 
fashion, were dream-figures, almost too good to be real. 

One bright Saturday, their mother brought the two 
older children into town, to lunch with me, in all their 
bravery of bright-colored bodices and neckerchiefs, coral 
necklaces, and gold head-ornaments, fairy-like caps, ample 
store of petticoats down to their ankles, and adorable 
smiles. Roses just plucked could not have been sweeter 
and fresher. They courtesied duly, and with proper dig- 
nity ; then, dimpling, each took an arm and marched 
with me to a book-store, unconscious of any wondering 
glances, serene and self-possessed. We found Hans Chris- 
tian Andersen's immortal fairy-tales translated, happily, 
and something else to go with it ; both were inscribed, in 
imperfect Dutch, with sentiments which made them beam 
delightedly on one another and on the donor ; and then we 
sat down to their first iahle d'hote. You would have sup- 




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150 



TRAVEL PICTURES 



posed they bad been bruugbt np at court I Xever a faux 
pas; two daintier little paragons never left Titania's circle. 
And wben we bad linisbed, and I asked, "Had von a good 
time ^" Wilbelmina answered, "Ileerli/l-, Mynheer!" 



^ 



T)(>nd)nrg nestles bebind its dnnes, amid its tangled 
(_»ld trees ; cberisbing its Roman antiqnities, proud of 
C^armen Svlva's affection for it, and affording tbe best 
batbing on tbe I^ortli Sea. Westkapellc bears tbe berce 
waves beat against tbe bigbest dykes in Holland, and pre- 
serves its own distinctive ISTorse type nnminglcd. Zonte- 
lande, ]3iggekerke, Meliskerke, Serooskerke, Aagtekerke, 
all are nnbelievably pictnresqne, clean, bidden away. In 
tbe fields by Arnemniden and l^ienweland fisber-girls toil 
blitbely among tbe beans and tnrnips. Higb abo\'c tbe 
river stretcbes tbe magnificent road on tbe dyke-to]) to 
^C^- ^"ronwepolder, tbonsands of gulls baunting it; and Oran- 
jezon shelters in tbe forest near to tbe eastern end of tbe 
dnne-cbain. 

But Veere is best of all. Maximilian's Beaker is 
empty now ; and yet tbey ponr from it a rare vintage of 
marvellous potency. Qnafiing it, one forgets tbe turmoil 
of modern life, tbe petty struggles for preeminence, tbe 
'^^ quarrels and resentments, tbe vain ambition and frenzied 
lust for pleasure. A vague melancboly pervades tbe air 
on gray days, or at twilight, with tbe thought of old, un- 
happy, far-off things — the crash oi Spanish arms, the great 
calamity which sunk half the city in one night beneath tbe 
waves, tbe pestilence that smote the English invaders ; and 
one half expects to see tbe ghosts of the Scottish wool- 





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VEERE AND WILLEMINA 



151 



merchant.s gathering round the d<:)orwav of the Scottish 
House on the quay, or to meet some ancient ]\Iarchioness 
of Yeere, stepped down from her niche in the Town Mall 
facade. 

But the sun rises gloriously over South Beveland ; the 
hoerlnnetjes patter through the streets bound for school, 
each face radiant with the same angelical innocence that 
blessed John Wesley noted among Dutch children five 
generations ago ; the brown sails flap in the west wind, as 
the fishing-boats tack before the harbour-mouth; and the 



chime tinkles out, "A mighty fortress is our God." 
can be melancholy then ? Not I, in darling Veere ! 



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EX(JEPT for certain eastern districts, in Gnelderland 
and Linibnrg, all Ilolland deserves its name: it is 
the Hollow Land, the jSTetlier-land, the Low Country, lying 
below the sea-level, and walled round by sand-dunes and 
sea-dykes. But it is none the less a land of many con- 
trasts, circumdata varietate. ISTot in costumes only, nor 
in features : the look of the landscape changes as one goes 
from Zceland northward into Utrecht ; there is a ditf erence 
in the architecture ; the dialect is not the same ; instead of 
wind-bloAvn elms, wonderful avenues of secular beeches 
stretch mysteriously into remote distances ; and there are 
no longer the golden wheat-fields of Walcheren, but ampler 
meadows where innumerable cattle graze, with crops of 
beets and turnips for staples. Yet the Dutch character is 
unchanged ; still the same sturdy independence, the same 
love of home, the same gracious hospitality that gives all 
those who profit by it a memory inefi'aceably delightsome. 
As the big coronetted motor-car whisked us away from 
Utrecht, past the majestic tower of the Cathedral, tragic 
in its isolation, and out beyond the Maliebaan and the old 
fortifications, towards the Castle of the Beeches, where 
our charmino' chance accnuiiiiTaiiccs of the ]\[id(lelburg 








154 



TRAVEL PICTURES 





steamboat had bidden us, we were conscious of entering 
upon a new experience, albeit we could have fancied our- 
selves with lifedong friends. In the dark days of the 
Cromwellian Rebellion, the son of a famous English poet 
crossed over-seas to escape from Puritan tyranny into a 
land of larger freedom than the "Commonwealth" afforded. 
His descendants, disguised only by the addition of a Dutch 
nobiliary particle, have intermarried with the most illus- 
trious families of their adopted country and are now as 
truly Dutch as any Knickerbocker family, after eight or 
ten generations, is American. But they do not forget the 
land and the tongue of their origin ; and ( fortunately for 
stray American guests) as much English as Dutch is 
spoken round their table, while the latest books and maga- 
zines in the same language are at hand. I shall not forget 
a family dinner-party of twenty covers, where, in honour 
of the two American guests, all the conversation was in 
our mother-tongue. Reverse the setting, and I fear we 
could scarcely show ourselves so considerate. 

The delightful eighteenth-century chateau is low, wide- 
spreading, and homelike above all. An avenue of beeches, 
two miles long, leads up to it from the highway ; and the 
park in which it stands has wonderful vistas of the same 
splendid trees stretching in every direction. Beyond are 
wide moors full of game, cultivated fields belonging to the 
home farm, and forests. The little village lies close to the 
park ; and Mynheer is Burgemeester, the Queen's personal 
representative, charged with all sorts of patriarchal func- 
tions by the Government as well as with those belonging 
to the lord of the manor. Tt is i>o(»d to see the beainina' 




l^S^Y^'^-'^f^fr^l 




^^^Trc^r\Y'^. Ki 




A DUTCH CHATEAU 



155 



salutations lie receives from everyone ; good, too, to see 
Frenle Margot wave a tiny hand with a "Dag, meisje," to 
every little girl on the roadside, or to read the daily letters 
IT'T''" addressed to the gracious, high, well-born Mevrouw by 
b'^F^' the three old brothers who work the home farm, and who 
sign themselves always, "Your affectionate boys." Feudal- 
ism is out of date, the moderns tell us ; but it is infinitely 
better, with its recognition of mutual duties and responsi- 
bilities, than our hard, isolating individualism. 

A French Roman Catholic Bishop from Japan once 
visited the church whose unworthy Rector I am ; and as he 
saw the marvellous carvings, the glory of the windows, the 
costly loveliness of the vestments and the vessels, but also 
the simplicity and severity of whatever had to do with the 
congregation as distinguished from what had to do with 
God's honour, he said, "M. le Cure, this is intelligent 
splendour!" I liked the compliment, and, midatis mu- 
tandis, I apply it to the Castle of the Beeches. Of vulgar, 
flaunting, parvenu luxury, there was not a trace; but the 
life there led seemed ideally domestic and peaceful, with 
the graces of inherited culture and acquired wisdom. Four 
splendid sons and one adorable small daughter make u]) the 
family. One is at the university, studying law ; another 
is a cavalry cadet at the Dutch West Point ; the younger 
sons are still under tutors and governors ; and Margot 
makes sunshine all over the ])lace, as is meet at thirteen. 
(Anything more entrancing than her colloquial English, 
with its occasional bit of slang, wonid be bard to imagine.) 
The routine of life is, of course, imieli flie same as in an 
American or Englisb eeiinri-y-lKjuse of e(pial dignity, but 



^a 



witli less feverish excitement, less conscious effort after 
amnsement. Sport takes a secondary place, as is right, 
and there is more time for thought, for solid reading, and 
f(;»r that art too much neglected among us, general con- 
versation. It is not a 
pension, which has in- 
dependence for each 
person living there, 
but a Home; and I 
loved it. 

Motor-cars annihi- 
late distance ; so we 
saw all the country 
round about under the 
wisest g u i d a n c e : 
Utrecht itself, seat of a 
university and centre of 
Dutch Old Catholicism, 
with a history reaching 
back to Roman times ; 
Gorinchem, where the 
martyrs witnessed a 
good confession in the 
time of Maurice of 
Orange ; Woudrichem, 
walled still, on the opposite bank of the Merwede, with its 
massive brick church-tower ; Loevestein, the gloomy 
twelfth-century island castle where Hugo de Groot, 
Grotius, was imprisoned so long and delivered by his 
brave wife's audacitv ; Hilversum, filled with handsome 




CHUKCH TOWER. WOUDKIGIIEM. 










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A DUTCH CHATEAU 157 




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villas ill toi'inal li'ardciis, aii<l fa\'<»urit(' rcHiilciicc of Ani- 
sterdain's elite; Zeist, with its AIoraA'ian eoloiiv ; Soestdyk, 
home of the Queeii-]\J other, who seems still as well- 
beloved as the Queen Regnant, Wilhelmina herself; 
Leuzen, with the oldest church in all Holland; l^aarn, 
environed with green; Heizen, (juaint tishing \'illagc 
on the Zuider Zee; and IJnnschoten and Spakenbnrg, 
further eastward on the same shore, wliei'c costumes have 
not changed (they boast) since ( luirlemagne's time; 
Amersfoort, with its beautiful gates and lowers, seat of 
the Old Catholic Seminary; and many a trim little village 
snugly settled among its dykes, by name unknown to me. 
Speaking of the Old Catholics, it is a jjity that our 
Dutch brethren of that Communion show so little mission- 
ary zeal. Over and over I have spoken to Dutch friends 
about the ancient Church of Holland, with its Archbishop 
at Utrecht, his Suffragans and their clergy, and with a 
vernacular Mass, as affording a haven of refuge from Cal- 
vinism and Ultramontanism, only to l)e told: ''I never 
heard of such a Church in our country!" The adherents 
of the "Old Episcopal Clergy" are devout and earnest 
people ; their services are reverent and beautiful ; and the 
right Faith and the Sacraments have unquestionably been 
preserved. But cui bono, unless to convert Holland? 
Years ago, some Old Catholic from the ^vTetherlands hav- 
ing made a disparaging comment upon the Anglo-(^atholic 
Communion, Bishop Coxe smiled tinely, and quoted: 
"Soror nostra parva. et nhera )io)i Jiahet" (Cant. .S:8). 
Alas for the truth of it! ]Sr(nv, if ever, educated Protes- 
tant Holland needs the C^atholic Reliiiion freed from 




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Popei'v ; and lumiau (JaTlioiic llollaiid needs a city of 
refuge from the mediaeval reaction of Merry del A"al and 
the other obscurantists who speak through Pius's "infalli- 
ble" lips. If only the Old Catholics would rouse them- 
selves and evangelize St. Willibrord's regions, intinite 
good might come. Perhaps they will ; even as our own 
American Church broke away from aristocratic Toryism 
into a sense of its national responsibility, and as the Scot- 
tish Church, tired of living in the Jacobite past as a re- 
sjDectable coterie of gentle-folk, is now doing glorious work 
in the slums and among the crofters. Haste the day ! 

The children of the peasants have laid aside any dis- 
tinctive costume; they are (whether in consequence or 
coincidentally) nothing like so attractive as mj ever- 
beloved Zeeuwsch youngsters. But some of the old people 
still preserve their ancient dress, and it sets them ad- 
mirably. Mynheer's old carpenter and his wife, pictured 
herewith, illustrate it ; such kind, rosy, wrinkled, sweet 
old faces as they have ! In the fishing-villages there is 
costume enough, rather Frisian in type, and not very 
beautiful. The girls have three stages of style: up to 
seven, from seven to fourteen, and above fourteen. Idie 
men are still quarrelsome and ready with a blow or a 
knife, as in old times when Karel de Keizer transplanted 
them en masse where he thought they would be the least 
trouble. But that border of the Zuider Zee is almost 
wholly unvisited by travellers, and so keeps its proper 
native flavour as few other regions can. 

It was all incrediblv interestina; ; and vet, however far 



-fi^vY^ 



^ 



we went, the best of it was the home-coming at dusk, with 
the welcoming voices at the porch, the merry dinner-party, 
with Margot at my side as an unfailing delight, and 
Willem in his sober livery behind his mistress's chair, 
directing the neat-handed maids in their service ; then the 
bright drawing-room, and tea served, after the Dutch cus- 
tom, which was English too fiftv vears ago; and sucli 



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A DUTCH DAEBY AND JOAN, 




talk as one too seldom hears, till ten o'clock meant bed-time 
for us all. O thrice, yea, four times blessed those fortu- 
nate travellers whom St. Martin guided there! O me- 
morable half-hour, which by a happy propinquity opened 
magic doors to two wandering priests, and laid the founda- 
tions of a lasting friendship ! Greetings over-seas, Chate- 
laine of the Beeches, to you and your flock! Heaven 
send I see you all again sometime soon ! 






^^if^^^i^ffi 






IT is not easy to stop writing abont Holland, when one 
loves it. Bnt life is short ; and even the devoted lover 
of the Low Country must lift up his eyes to the hills some- 
times. Besides, a well-spent summer of travel ought to 
divide itself fairly between seeing familiar scenes over 
again (for the twentieth time, if they are dear and peace- 
ful) and adding new regions of earth's beauty to one's 
acquaintance. So, from the Castle of the Beeches I turned, 
by a rather devious course, toward eastern Europe. But 
first it was necessary to revisit Ostende, the finest bathing- 
beach in Europe. 

What a cosmopolitan crowd throngs the dyke north and 
south of the cheerful little palace that Leopold built ! 
Every national costume that survives in Europe, with some 
from Asia and Africa, is displayed there ; and, even though 
the levelling hand of the London or Paris tailor has done 
its worst, it is as good as a lecture on comparative eth- 
nology to stroll from one end to the other, eyes and ears 
attent. Germans predominate, I think: indeed, up at 
Blankenberghe, a few miles north, they have the whole 
place to themselves practically. (And though some of 
them are the disagreeable, bullying, overbearing, military 



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TRAVEL PICTURES 



Prussian sui'r, that requires to be dealt with tiruily and 
positively, there are others who are delightful. It is dan- 
gerous to generalize, particularly in a disagreeable sense.) 
But French, Dutch, Poles, llussians, Hungarians, Turks, 
Arabs, Italians, Spaniards, all are to be found, with no 
inconsiderable sprinkling of English and Americans, en- 
joying the splendid sand and the pounding waves in 
democratic good-fellowshi]>. It was three years ago that 
Yvonne, (_^lairette, and Sinionne made friends with me 
there; and a visit to l^uroix' would not be complete with- 
out a glimpse of them all. 80 this summer, too, we met 
again; and I heard all the news of the pensionnat. rejoiced 
with eleven-year-old Claire on her first Communion, and 
congratulated Yvonne u])on her first attempts at English 
conversation — vastly better than my French, I must al- 
low. Dear children they are, and a credit to the military 
households where they have been brought up ! 

The Belgian peasant is not so attractive as his 
Dutch cousin, Arthur Sherburne Hardy's Wind of Des- 
tiny to the contrary notwithstanding ; and very little 
costume survives the cheapness of the ready-made cloth- 
ing shops. But some of the old women wear a dress like 
that of the Beguines of centuries ago ; and the clatter of 
sahofs sounds pleasant across the flags of the market-place. 
(Who that has read Ouida's Two Little Wooden SJioes 
can ever forget it '''. ) And everywhere, I believe, from 
China to Peru, a smiling face will find smiling faces, a 
pleasant word Avill l)reak down barriers, a little kindly 
consideration wull make friends. 













OSTENDE AND NUREMBERG 



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163 



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164 ■- TRAVEL PICTURES 

But Osteiide was only an incident on a longer jour- 
ney. There Selmstian and I parted, lie drawn to ISTor- 
mandy by the attractions of a motor-tour, and I impelled 
eastward, across familiar regions, in search of countries 
yet unseen by me. All the way across Belgium and 
Lux('ml)ourg was not a very long j(»urney, though I re- 
gretted tliiit darkness had 
closed in on us by Heristal, 
and Aix-la-(^lia2:)elle was com- 
[>letely hidden. But the glo- 
rious spires of CV')logne stood 
out against the midnight sky 
superbly, while the city hum- 
bled itself l)efore them as if on 
its knees. And when, next 
morning early, 1 took the train 
for I^urendx'rg, the l)ri]liant 
sunshine clothed everything 
with splendour, and the Rhine 
seemed worthy of all its tra- 
<litions. 




\ BEGUINE AT OSTENDE. 

of the Continent, as if 



It is the fashion to laugh 
at the Government Railways 
ours, privately owned, were 
\astlv better. Ihit I take leave to doubt if we have any 
giound for exulting. The German stations are much 
hn( 1 than ours, there are fewer accidents, fewer delays, 
and (once you learn the necessary regulations) fewer 
aniKtvances. T do not like the compartment cars, I own. 











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Aside from that detail, the German and Austrian roads 
compare very well with ours : and the Swiss are much 
bettor, with cheaper rates. The restaurant-cars, too, are 
admirable and inexpensive ; and the officials of every sort 
have a crisp, military courtesy which is refreshing. 

The journey up the Rhine and across Bavaria to 
Nuremberg is unbroken delight. Even the signs of domi- 
nant industrialism cannot spoil the wonder of the river's 
hilly banks, castle-crowned, the charm of the steep-roofed, 
half-timbered houses set at every angle, the spell of 
the old churches, the invitation of the valleys that wind 
away into terra incognita, the peace of the rolling uplands 
where rich meadows and fertile corn-land alternate with 
forests, and the Bauer is the chief personage of his com- 
munity. Perhaps I fancied it : but as we crossed the 
Bavarian frontier, the landscape took on a gentler beauty, 
and the people were friendlier than their northern neigh- 
bours. There is far more difference between Prussian 
and Bavarian than between Canadian and American ; 
and the German Empire is not yet so perfectly fused into 
one as to have obliterated very real distinctions between 
Xorth and South Germany. The Wittelsbachs, sovereigns 
of Bavaria, cannot help regarding the Hohenzollerns as 
comparative 'parvenus among reigning families ; and the 
blue-and-white Bavarian flag is universally displayed, 
^\diile one sees the German standard infrequently. They 
tell a tale in Petersburg, that when at Czar Nicholas' 
coronation a Bavarian ]n-ince was presented as "one of 
the suite of Prince Henry of Prussia," there was a violent 
burst of indignation from the Wittelsbach, who disclaimed 



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aiij connection with Prussia and Prussians in the most 
emphatic manner. And the incident is typical of the 



general attitude. 



Of ]^uremberg much has been written: "the Casket 
of German gems," its people call it. But it can never be 
praised too much. Girt still with its mediieval walls and 
towers, the magnificent Castle topping all on its acropolis, 
and divided 1)\' the Pegnitz, it must look to-day much as 
it did when Peter Visscher and Adam Kraft worked at 
their masterpieces, four centuries ago. There are electric 
trams, to be sure, and better sewers than the middle ages 
knew- ; but the modern buildings within the walls C( )nf orm 
to the general type, and wherever you walk, it is into 
enchantment. How they love flowers, these good Ger- 
mans ! All the windows break out into a veritalde })ageant 
of bloom, and every l)it of garden is coaxed to its utmost 
capacity of flowering. If some unkind person says that 
the worthy ]!*^urembergers know it pays to be picturesque, 
the statement, though true, is no reproach; and only our 
lazy indilference to the things that are more excellent 
keeps us from making the same discovery. Such a market- 
place as that which contains the Liebfrauenkirche and the 
Schone Brunnen is as definitely related to the cost of 
living as to the joy of lieauty. Ah, we Americans boast of 
being practical; but we do not yet fully comprehend that 
the utile is never so useful as when it blends with the didce. 

The two most famous churches of ^N^nremberg, St. 
Lawrence and St. Sebald, are both in Lutheran hands ; 




rc\>r/^ 




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168 



TRAVEL PICTURES 



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and thej, more reverent than Calvinists, have left most 
of the glory and beauty of material things unharmed. 
When I was a child I loved the exquisite verses of Long- 
fellow — poet too much ignored hj a generation unworthy 
his pure spiritual beauty : 

"In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands 
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, 
stands. 

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song. 
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that roTind them 
throng: 



>A'r7 



Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, 
Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; 

And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted in their uncouth rhyme, 
That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime. 



mfn: 



— f" 



Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art ; 
Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common 
mart ; 

And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, 
By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own. 

In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust. 
And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust. 

In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pyx of sculpture rare, 
Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. 

Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart, 
Lived and laboured Albrecht Diirer, the Evangelist of Art. 



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Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand. 
Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land. 



Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies; 
Dead he is not, but departed — for the artist never dies. 



02^ 



Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair, 
That he once has trod its pavements, that he once has breathed its air. 



Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, hxureate of the gentle craft, 
Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed. 



^^ 









Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard, 
But thy painter, Albrecht Diirer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler-bard. 

Thus, Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away, 
As he paced thy streets and courtyards, sang in thought his care- 
less lay: 

Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a lloweret of the soil. 
The nobility of labour — the long pedigree of toil." 

Tliej came back to me, as I looked from the castle 
tower over the red-roofed city ; and I remembered how, 
when I used to read them, a little boy in New York, 
ISTuremberg seemed so remote that I scarcely dared hope 
to see it with my own eyes. Ah, if only I might have had 
for companion that exquisite and gracious lady who first 
taught me to love poetry, from whom I learned what was 
in deepest sense my mother-tongue, and all that I know 
of other languages as well, whose voice above my cradle, 
reading Tlie Golden Legend, is my first of all memories, 
how my joy would have been multiplied ! But these six 
years she has known a City fairer than those of earth, 
walking by the River of the water of life, clear as crystal ; 
and we are lonely with an unassuaged loneliness. 

Two memories are clearest when I think of Nurem- 
berg. I went to the parish Mass in the Liebfrauenkirche 
Sunday morning at 9 o'clock. Fourteenth-century Gothic 
it is, lovely and pure, a true monuuiont of Christian Art 



■ '\f'-^Q:y' ty ^li^ V X»2^ Tj- \;a-^ ~j- \^(^ XT ^5?^"-ls<^ X/ ^isS^'/S&S^V ^ 




in general and in detail. Bnt it is also the centre of a 
living faith. ISTot a place was vacant ; the aisles were 
crowded when the Mass began — good-looking, wholesome, 
honest folk of all social grades. The priest made his 
Latin articulate and audible ; and the congregation shouted 
the old chorales in such stirring and melodious ecstasy 
as one only finds in Germany. There was real, loving 
devotion there, the spirit of prayerful worship. (How 
I wish the Wellesley professor who prates about "Prayer 
as a survival of barbarism," in a recent Harvard Theolo- 
gical Review, might have bent her stiff neck in that con- 
gregation ! ) 




Later in the day I visited the Burg, saw the Iron 
Maiden and all the other devilish instruments of torture, 
unwisely preserved for curious gaze, looked down into 
the profundity of the castle well, gazed with mingled 
emotion at the imperial suite, and paid my respects to all 
the lions of the citadel. Then I sat down, under Cuni- 
gunda's lime-tree, to meditate. But I was not left alone ; 
a dear, rose-faced child of ten, with a veritable golden 
fleece, came shyly to sit by me and make friends. We 
talked of many things (she was clever enough to under- 
stand my German!) — of her school, her home, her little 
brother, her church: "I am Protestant, Herr Pfarrer," 
she said with conviction. .Vnd ^svhen we parted, Sophie 
and I, never to meet again in this life, I went down to 
the Red Hen for my dinnta-, thinking how much more 
interesting and wonderful is the soul of a child than all 
the castles imperial j^ridc has ever l)iiil(l('(L 







MFjSTICH is as ditferent from Nuremberg as Milan 
from Siena, or Cleveland from Charleston ; though 
the differences are not precisely parallel, j^uremberg is 
mediaeval ; Munich is modern. ]^uremberg is Gothic ; 
Munich (except the Liebfrauenkirche and the Ilathaus ) 
is Italian Renaissance chiefly. J^uremberg clusters round 
a fortress, hill-enthroned; Munich spreads widely over a 
plateau, with palaces and art galleries for its central 
structures. Nuremberg is essentially Grerman ; Munich 
is dominantly cosmopolitan. I like them both ; but 
Nuremberg far more. Nuremberg lends itself to poetry ; 
witness Longfellow's exquisite verses. Munich is a field 
for fiction; as, for examples, Ilarni Lorrequer and Tower 
of Ivory. The American and English colonies in Munich 
are very large : students of music, painting, science ; 
families living abroad so that the children may learn 
foreign languages ; others attracted by the lower cost of 
living; some few deliberately expatriated as a nuitter 
of preference. There are also American and English 
churches, our own worshipping in rented quarters pleas- 
antly equipped, the English congregatiou iu a uew church 
recentlv erected. Both do excellent work rcliiiiouslv and 






socially ; Lut one must regret that the priest of the English 
church published an appeal for money in American news- 
j)apers, entirely ignoring the American church and giv- 
ing (inadvertently, perhaps) the impression that the sole 
responsibility for English-speaking Churchmen in Munich 
was his. 

It is the fashion, I believe, to admire the vast build- 
ings in Italian style which fill Munich's streets ; but I 
must admit that they seemed to me cold, depressing, and 
out of place as absurdly as a formal Italian garden is in 
Connecticut. Something that smacks of the soil is far 
better ; and the glorious new Rathaus, or the fine old 
Cathedral of Our Dear Lady (so the happy German and 
Dutch phrase always puts it) are worth them all. I 
shall not forget a High Mass at the C-athedral, followed 
by a Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, a class of first 
communicants attending. There was an earnest, eloquent 
sermon first of all — not a bad plan, that, and quite general 
on the Continent. The great church was crowded to the 
doors ; and the service following was so reverent, so un- 
hurried, so decorously magnifical, that one felt quite at 
home and scarcely noted that the words were Latin. It 
might have been St. Mary the Virgin's or St. Clement's. 
Roman Catholicism in Bavaria is not what it is in Rome, 
or in Spain, or even in America. 

It is strange how what we like best comes so often 
our way. As I was searching for a place in the dense 
crowd, a beautiful English child appeared by my side, 
carrying Athelstan Riley's Guide to llif/h Mass Abroad, 
and accompanied by an older conqianion. I had seen her 





MUNICH AND THE DANUBE 



173 




um 





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tys^A^'n 






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STATUE OF BAVAKIA, MUA'ICII. 






W4 










at breakfast, in tlic " Emjlischcf llof" ; and it was a 
delight to find seats tog'ether and whisper exphmations of 
all that Avas happening in the service. She was far 
lovelier, in her radiant innocence and piety, than any 
saint shining there resplendent in the niches ; and I hope 
she said a little prayer for her friend of that inorning 
hi»nr who knelt by her side. You did, did j-ou not, little 
Gabrielle ? 





I do not mean to take yon with me through the great 
Munich galleries. Filled with treasures, they are never- 
theless soul-wearying by their super-abundance. A walk 
through the English Garden is far more refreshing, or 
a stroll through the ^^ai'k on the other side of the city, 
beyond the colossal "Bavaria" that stands majestic before 
the Hall of Fame. I never saw a great bronze statue to 
equal it. At the other extreme of art is the delicious little 
Buherlhrunnen, where a naked small boy spatters water 
into the face of a beaming satyr, only to have it squirted 
back at him — a perpetual joke in bronze, worth a hundred 
of our frock-coated, creased-trousered, rigidly erect "states- 
men" standing uncomfortably on pedestals in i)ublic 
squares. 

One is scarcely conscious of any transition as he 
crosses the Bavarian frontier into Austrian territory. 
The customs examination is a courteous formality (what 
a pity we are so low in the scale of civilization on that 
point!) and, except for the difference in uniforms, it 
wonld all set in (lei-nnin-land alike. And vet there are 





many differences, even in accent and architectnre ; while 
the Modernist Bavarian ecclesiastic, still mindful of 
Dollinger and the days when scholarship was not held 
incompatible with orthodoxy, is a long way removed from 
his ultra-reactionary Austrian neighbour, Jesuit-trained 
most likely. The heads of the states are not unlike ; the 
wonderful nonagenarian Regent in Bavaria, King in all 
but name, and Kaiser Franz Josef, youthful still in his 
eighties, both beloved by their people. But the House of 
Wittelsbach appears vastly more popular than the Habs- 
burg-Lorrainers to-day ; and the people in Munich seem 
to have a very real affection and respect for all their 
royalties, such as Vienna knows not. It was interesting, 
by the way, to see the gracious, sensible-looking elderly 
woman, Mary of Modena-Este, mother of the Bavarian 
heir. Prince Rupert, who by right of 1)1 ood is legitimately 
Queen of Great Britain, as Mary III. and IV. Katu- 
rally, I am a Rej^ublican of the Progressive wing; but I 
can a little sympathize with a charming Andalusian 
friend, who is honorary president of Spain's largest Re- 
publican club, yet avows a Carlist preference for Don 
Jaime over Don Alfonso : "T do not care for kings at all ; 
but if one must have them, I want the legitimate rather 
than the intruded. Legitimacy stands for principle, not 
expediency," 



-\WA/^ 




It was at Linz that I first slept under the Kaiser- 
liclie-Kbnigliclie flag. A clean, bright city of fifty thou- 
sand it is, on either side the Danube, with dismantled 
fortifications, a queer baroque Trinity column in its chief 



square, and a lovely green mountain overhanging, crowned 
by a pilgrimage church. From its terrace, in the glorious 
moonlight, the valley outs^n-ead below was like fairyland; 
and even the merrily romping children hushed as they 
looked down where the lights twinkled. At Linz, too, 
I first encountered Austrian courtesy : when I descended 
from the train, all the porters and hotel servants uncovered 
and bent to right angles ; and the tram-conductor did the 
same as he took my bag and carried it to a vacant place. 
Even the policemen were deferential ; and the handsome 
young army officers were all smiling and friendly. Rus- 
kin, lover of Italy, said once, in the days before Italian 
freedom, that no spot of earth was happier because of 
Austrian rule. But I think he forgot Austria itself; it 
seems a very happy land, and I want to know it better. 



^^ 



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It is a day's sail from Linz down the Danube to 
Vienna. One makes an early start, on a clean little 
steamer with good accomodations and excellent food ; and 
the day is all too short, so full is it of unmixed delight. 

There are rich meadows coming down to the river's 
edge ; cultivated fields where women in bright peasant- 
dress share the labour with their men-folk ; steepling crags 
surmounted by castles that outdo the Rhine in picturesque 
beauty; clean little towns washing their feet in the stream; 
forests that must be surviving fragments of the great 
Teutonic Wood ; ample modern chateaux with princely 
names attached : and a constant come-and-go of interesting 
people from every class. It is a veritable kinemacolor 
picture, where one sits at ease in the open air and rejoices. 



=>^^*C%- 




TRAVEL PICTURES 






POT 



Tlic only drop of bitter in my sweet was the presence of 
an American party : eight girls, two matrons, one man ; 
all lond, nasal, obstreperuns, gum-chewing, unappreciative, 
conversing of fashions and best-selling fiction, ignorant 
of the language and the history of the land they v>^ere 
traversing, ridiculing all they did not understand. The 
women wore ear-rings and hobble-skirts ; they should have 
been on a hotel veranda along the jSTew Jersey coast, 
playing bridge. A dear old Austrian priest who had made 
friends with me, on his way to a week's retreat at a 
famous Benedictine monastery, looked at them wondering : 

"'Are those fellow-countrypeople of yours ?" he 
questioned. 

"Yes," I replied, ''but of the baser sort, not typical 
Americans." 

I hope he believed me ; at any rate he blessed me when 
we touched at his destination, and sought a blessing in 
return. May both Ije granted ! 

In mid-afternoon we passed Diirnstein, a survival of 
the early middle age, with a magnificent castle still in 
good preservation, whose walls come down from its crag 
almost to the stream. There, so the legend says, Richard 
Goeur de Lion was concealed by the Archduke of Austria 
on his way home from the Crusade, until BlondeFs patient 
devoti<:)n discovered him and made his ransom possible. 
Some critics discredit the tale: but it is beautiful enough 
to be true. A far cry from Diirnstein t() the ( liateau 
Gaillard, where the great Plantagenet met his death- 
Avound ! AVhat school-boy who ever read Scott dutifTilly, 
liowever, Imt thinks of Richard as an imuiortal dclii:lit { 



;.'£?vv3 



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MUNICH AND THE DANUBE 



179 



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The Sim was sinking when we reached the pictnresque, 
wooded heights above Vienna ; and it was qnite dark when 
the steamer docked. But live minutes later, as I jolted 
in a fiacre through the multitudinous lights of the Volks- 
Prater, past the Prater-Stern, and over into the Stefans- 
platz, I realized that one of the world's greatest capitals 
was reached at last. Merry voices sounded everywhere, 
music echoed from a myriad cafes, the streets were 
thronged with gay crowds far brighter than those on the 
rather depressing boulevards of Paris ; and I found myself 
humming a Strauss waltz, remembered from under- 
graduate days, in a swift infection of the spirit of Vienna. 





m 




VIENNA AND SALZBURG 

OF all the great European capitals I have seen, Vienna 
]) leases me most. It is brighter than London, more 
historic and nioi'e picturesque than Berlin, more cheerful 
than Paris, more wholesomely alive than Kome, ampler 
than Brussels and the Hague. The green hill country 
conies up t(j its borders, rich in forests and vineyards and 
orchards. Indeed, three-fourths of the city's area ( as at 
present incorporated ) is open space, park or farm-land ; 
though the population is crowded into great blocks of 
tenements after the unhappy fashion of so many cities. 
Vienna is an epitome of the Austrian Empire : nay, rightly 
studied, it carries one back before the dawn of European 
history, into Keltic times ; and one's head spins as he tries 
to trace Roman, Ilim, Avar, Jasomirgott, Babenburg, 
Ottokar, llabsburg, through all the mazes of its annals. 
Marcus Aurelins died there. The Turkish wnvv broke 
into foam against its walls. And the Schatz-KaiiDncr, or 
imperial treasury in the Hofburg. brings Charlemagne 
and his successors, down to the baby king of Rome, almost 
visibly before the spectator. But I must be on my guard 
against the temptation to be guide-booky. Im]iressions, 
after all, are Ix'ttcr than inforuiation, for uiy ])iirpose at 
least. 




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The streets of ^"ielllla are bright Avith varied costTiiiies 
that help t(> make ])Iaiii the iniparalleled dixcrsity of 
Franz Josef's reahiis. ^ Our ti'ue \'ieniiese is a hit of a 
dandv, and his wonieu-folk rival those of Paris in the 
daintiness and charm of their appearance. IJut side In- 
side with those u]tra-mo(h'rn disciples of elite are Moslems 
from Bosnia, gaily-dressed monntaineers of Galicia. ])eas- 
ant women from Aloravia in to])-l)oots and scarlet skirts, 
gaherdined Polish Jews with ringlets, black-eyed Magyars, 
still wearing something of their ancient splendour, C^zechs 
and halmatians, Italians from the yet ^'unredeemed" 
regions along the Adriatic, Tirolese mountaineers in knee- 
In-eeches, and twenty other ty])es. P]very where, too, are 
soldiers: fine, pictur(\sqne fellows, with handsome ofticers ; 
l)ut an incr('dil)le burden to the tax-])ayers, and a detriment 
to every industry that nee(ls men. Perha]»s, when the 
l)]ess('d day (d' disai'mamcnt conies, there will be men 
enough in Vienna to can-y mortar and lay brick ami (dean 
the streets, without putting those tasks and others even 
harder u])on women's shoulders. 

The old city lies at the centre of Vienna, and still 
keeps its ]>rer'minence because of the Im])erial Palace and 
the palaces of the great nobles clustered near it. Jdie 
great (Cathedral of St. Stephen on the Stefans]datz is the 
chief survival of middle-age architecture, though parts of 
the Hofhiirf/ go back to the fourteenth centnry. Ibii the 
splendid museums, the University Ituildings where six 
thousand students gather, the classic Parliament buildings, 
and the really glorious Gothic Rathaus are all modern; 
and the wide boulevards that eneir(de the ('it\-, followina' 






H'hl 







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^%r^^' .'^^'i5C 



VIENNA AND SALZBURG 



183 












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the lilies of the ancient walls and furtitications, more than 

make up for the l()ss of the mediieval battlements. Then, 

as one journeys outward through the snl)iirl)s, he hnds 

bits of delighfnl old villages preserved among modern j, | 11 

villas, or loses his way in the green solitudes of the '■'^'''h^^ 

Wienerwald as if it were another Ardeii and no mighty 

city with its two million people lay close by. It was 

on such a woodland path that I met Teresia and Anna 

one afternoon, little peasants, twelve years old, pale and 

clean and gentle-mannered, each bending under a huge 

faggot gathered in the forest. We sto])ped to make friends |f|frfi! 

(never a ditficiilt task in such circumstances) and jn-e- ^-"-^'^^-^ 

sently my camera came into use. When we parted, 

Teresia came running after me, her burthen laid aside for 

the moment. "Oh, ilerrschaft, do yon think it would 

cost very innch if 1 were to have one of the pictures 

sent back to me V She wrote her name in my book ; and 

yon may be sure that hers was the very first picture that 

I ])osted this autumn. 



The visitor is never allowed to forget that he is in 
a monarchical country. The magic Tv.-K. is everywhere: 
"kaiserUcli c-l-nii i<iHcliP." "imperial-royal," from railways 
to groceries. And there seems a very real affection for 
the old Kaiser, who has reigned so long and through so 
many vicissitudes that he seems already a ]iart of ancient 
history. TIk^ Ixevolution of '4S, the long struggle for 
Italian freedom, the readjustment of German states, the 
practical establishuient of Hungarian iiide]iendence, the 
downfall of Napoleon HI., all these and a score of other 



WM 




epoch-making events he has witnessed, each one related 
to himself ; and he still survives, a mighty, unifying force, 
holding together under his sceptre a multitude of peoples 
and races and tongues. What will come afterward, wdio 
can say 'i The heir is detested. Socialism is gaining 
rapidly, clericalism is doomed. It may be a group of 
republics. More likely Austria will enter the German 
Empire, leaving Czechs and Slavs and Magyars to fight 
it out among themselves. Meanwhile the solemn first line 
of the Austrian hymn has a deep significance, as the mili- 
tary band plays it in the Hofhurg daily at 1, to open the 
concert : 

"God preserve lis Franz the Kaiser." 






■=kfe^ 



What a contrast between the dazzling splendour of 
the Imperial Treasury, and the crypt of the Capuchin 
church, not far away! In the Scliatz-Karnmer they dis- 
play Charlemagne's crown, sceptre, orb, alb, dalmatic, 
stole, girdle, coronation-robe, and sword ; the insignia of 
the Grolden Fleece ; the Florentine Diamond that Charles 
the Bold lost at Morat ; the vestments of the iSTorman kings 
of Sicily, eight centuries old ; and then, passing over 
crowns and jewels of all the Habsburgs, the regalia of 
jSTapoleon as the king of Italy, and the silver-gilt cradle 
of the king of Rome. It is a cave of enchantment, whose 
very walls blaze with cloth-of-gold and gems. "Pomp and 
show of kings," indeed. But in the Capuziner crypt the 
dead royalties moulder without even the decorous privacy 
of the grave to hide their cotRns. Great, hideous leaden 
sarcophagi, adorned with fat cherubs and grinning skulls, 



S^o^-^aci^V-^o^^?^ 









TRAVEL PICTURES 

the gaudv licraMry UKtckiui;' ;il], nearly a liinidred and 
fifty of them, hold the mortal part of the Habsbnrgs and 
Habsbnrg-Lorrainers from Emperor Matthias in Hilli, 
down to Empress Elizabeth and her son, the ill-fated 
(Jrown Prince Rudolf. 

How the names sound as the gentle old Franciscan pro- 
claims them I AFaria Thc^resa, Francis L, J()se])li IT., 

Lco])()ld 11., Alaximilian of 
Mexico, wretched victim of 
Xa])oleon lll.'s ambition, 
^larie L(uiise, Xapoleon I.'s 
consort, and poor little 
L'Aiglon. On his colfin 
rests a Avreath tied with tri- 
colour : the Xapoleojiic tra- 
dition still survives among 
other "lost causes." And 
the whole ])lace ]U'('aches <:)ne 
sermon: t^tc fi-aiisil (/loi'ta 
III iiikJi ! 

:\IARBLE FOUNTAIXy, CATHE- 
DRAL SQUARE. SALZBURG. -^ , ,- ■ • n 

Kuough ot imperiai 
Vienna : now for sweeter regions and purer air. CJan 
there be a quieter, brighter, cheerier little city in all 
Euro]:)e than Salzburg, on the Salzach, capital of the <>ld 
Prince-Bishopric, and dominated by the \'ast and gloomy 
pile of Hohensalzburg ^ All about is lovely champaign, 
the mountains coming just near enough to make the con- 
trast more delightfid. The Salzach foams through th(^ 
town between the wooded ( Vi])uziiierberg on the right 






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VIENNA AND SALZBURG 










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and the Monchsberg and Ilohensalzburg on the left. The 
iii'st one climbs by lovely woodbind paths; but the other 
two, rising vertically four hundred feet from the level, 
are more easily ascended by lifts. At their base quaint 
old houses cling to the rock like swallows' nests ; and the 
ancient cemetery of St. Peter contains the chapel of St. 
Maximus, marking the spot where the martyr was thrown 
down from the summit, fourteen centuries ago, l)y the 
heathen Ileruli. 

I never saw friendlier people than those of Salz];)urg. 
Even the guards at the gloomy old Residenz (where the 
divorced Queen of Saxony grew up, impatient of her 
royalty) smiled cheerfully at all passers-by ; and two dear 
small youngsters devoted a whole day to accompanying me 
everywhere. Paracelsus died there, Mozart was born 
there. But the present human interest of the place does 
not depend upon old associations. You visit the torture- 
chamlier of the castle and see the devilish devices whereby 
the old Prince-Bishops were wont to shepherd their sheep ; 
and, seeing, cry, as I did, Vive la Reiwlidlon ! Vive '89/'' 
greatly to the delight of some French friends accom])any- 
ing. But later, dining out-of-doors, in the leafy shades of 
the ]\Ionchsl)erg, as the sunset glory fades, the horrid 
memories pass, and you see only the enchanted city, whose 
streets are full of boys and girls playing in the streets, 
their laughter rising up, an acceptable oblation to God our 
Father. Ah, Salzburg is better than Vienna ! , 




'n 




WMT^ 





XII. 

INNSBRUCK: THE GHOST OF SCHLOSS WEIHERBURG 

WIIEX I was a school-boy, I learned for declamation 
Andreas Hofer's "Defence," and thrilled with joy 
at the absolute sincerity and conrage of its splendid elo- 
qnence. Years afterward, in Chicago, I met two de- 
scendants of that matchless patriot, bearing his name; and 
it seemed more glorions to descend from the gallant 
peasant-hero than from the cowardly Emperor Francis, 
in whose name he fonght and who betrayed him so basely. 
It is Hofer, not any Habsbnrg of the lot, whose name 
dominates Innsbrnck to-day ; and the Ked Eagle floats over 
Tirol's monntains and valleys becanse of him and his 
peasant comjianions-in-arms. llindful of that, I turned 
my l:)ack on the starred ''hotels of the first class, frequented 
l)y the English" ( vkle Baedeker ) and sought out the Gold- 
iicr Adli'r. close by the swiftly rushing Inn, l)ecause llofer 
used to lodge there. Then I went out from its cleanly 
simplicity, ])ast the Golden Balcony, under the archway, 
scarcely daring to lift up my eyes to the mighty liills that 
are Innsbnu-k's northern boundary, and enter('(l the Ilof- 
l-'n-rlic. ^Inxiuiilian's su]>erl) cenotaph is there, the kings 
and queens in bronze standing on guard round about it, 
Theodoric, Arthur, and all the rest, wondrous to see. But 






it was t(.) ]I(.»fer\s tomb that 1 turned mv rcvenait steps, 
where his bones repose between kS])eekbaeher and Ilas- 
pinger, his comrades. Jmjx'rial gratitncle erected the 
tablet; but every mountain-] )eak in Tii-ol is in some sense 
his monument, who kept Tirol free from foreiiin tyranny 
when even his own sovereign consented to sign aw;iy that 
freedom. 

What citv couhl have a lovelier situation than Inns- 



■3> 



dJ 







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INA'SUKICK KKO.M SCHI.OSS \V KLl I KJiB L'RG 





l)rnck ^ The Tun valU'y is wi<le iind fertile, and the rapid 
river Hows :it tlie very foot of abru]»lly rising mountains 
nine thousand feet high, nudging a northern wall like a 
mighty fortress protecting the town. l]y gradual ascents 
one reaches mountains even higher to the south and south- 
east, shar]) ]>eaks where the snow lies late and comes early- 
In the midst is the Flofhurg. the palace, and the Govern- 



INNSBRUCK: THE GHOST OF SCHLOSS WEIHERBURG 191 



&. 
c^'. 



iiiciit huildiiiii's ; and hcyoiid them lies ilic / 1 (ifi/ai-lcii . the 
l()\'oli('.st, most jK-acctuI retreat iiiiaiiiiiahle, iVmii wlKtse 
Ui'ceii recesses one looks up to the iiia|estic, frown iiia,' snni- 
niits that seem aetnallx- imjiendinu. AInch id' the town 
is iiewlv hnilt, ahisl for it has now fifty thousand people; 
hnt eiioiiii,ii remains of the n\A streets with their arcades, 
their steep stairways, and tlieir many ,i;ahh's, to iii\'e the 
ini])i'essioii of aniiipiity. Everywhere, too, one sees the 
moniitaineers in iheii' lu-iii'ht costumes, the men hai'ed<nee<l, 
with shoi't hi-eeclies ;ind ha If-sti tck i nii's, and wonderfnl 
plumes in their hats, the women in hi'iii'ht skirts an<l 
^^^^^ bodices, with white oi- re(| stockini^s and hats oi as many 
patterns as there are \dnaii,es. They are not heantiful, 
these o'ood Tiroh'se ; theii' features ai'c hea\'y, the ex- 
pi'ession dull, and the citnijdexioii poor, nsually. But 
^' they im])ress one as thorouii'hly honest and i^ood and kind; 

^^v^j and they ai'e always friendly and res]»onsi\-e, lik'c their 
'I '' Bavarian and Swiss neiiihlxmrs of the same racial stock. 
A steam-tram clind)s laboriously up past Wcvl!: Isel, 
scene of IIofei''s \'ictory. and Sehloss Amin-as, to Ii;']s, 
three thousami feet hiuh. with jdeasant mead<tws and wind- 
\\[iX ])atlis anioii^' pine-foi'ests. Across the \-alley a funi- 
cular railway ascends the II una,'erl)ura,', wdience are walks 
throuii'h dwarf-e\-eri!,reens u]> to the nake<| desolalion ot 
the limestone summits where no veo'etation is found. On 
a. grassy terrace four hnndre<l teet al)o\'e the Inn, Sehloss 
Weiherbnrg' stands, well-preserved, though somewhat 
^ fallen from its hiu'h estate as an archducal huntini!.--lo(lo(', 

■^' and now oidy a poision. much in fa\'oni' with l^nglish 

visitors. 









'5^^'j%> 



^^'^'\'r7 



^€^ 













■'»~?'V^^:^ 



192 






TRAVEL PICTURES 



^m 




Here I digress. Several years ago, visiting on the 
south shore of Massachusetts, a fdlow-gnest told me her 
experience in Schloss Weiherburg ; and as wo shuddered 
under "Testudo's" hospitable roof h\ the cliffs of Scituate, 
I resoh'ed to visit that haunted castle some daj in j^erson. 
Her story is this, told in the first person: 

"Pa])a and I were staying in the old Stddoss overlook- 
inii' Iiinsl>ruck, with rooms on the thii'([ floor. Aline was 






mra 






Xl 



SCHLOSS WEIHEKBURG, IXNSBEUCK. 



a corner room; then came a large (doset with doors open- 
ing through; and Papa's room w^as 1)cyond. Pa])a had to 
go to Vienna fV)r a few days, leaving me alone; bnt there 
were many pleasant people whom I knew in the house, 
and I wasn't at all lonely. The first night of his absence 
another girl came n]> t(» call, and we sat talking till |)ast 
ten. J felt a cold draught on my neck, and got u]) to see 



14J 



I I 6- 




^^ 



3^? >• 



^Iv^. 




INNSBRUCK: THE GHOST OF SCHLOSS WEIHERBURG 193 



if ii window was open aiiywhci'c, l)ut f(Hiii(i cvcrvtliiiig 
closed tii>,lit, ill the other i-ooiii as in miiic, and the outer 
door there holted. 1 closed the closet doors carefully, the 
old-fashioned latches rattliiiii,' as I touched them, and 
concluded that the cold air came through some crack in 
the wall, or ill-litting casement. My friend left ])resently, 
and T made ready for heel; l)ut 1 was disturlx'd by a loud 
rap at my father's door. 1 ]>ai(l no heed to it, however, 
and it was not repeate(|. ( )nce in bed, 1 stretched myself 
luxuriously, and opened my eyes for ;i farewell glance at 
the moonlight. 

''But I was not alone! A tigure stood close hy the 
bed, so close that its knees ])ressed against thi' mattress. 
It was muffled in a cloak which com])letely obscured its 
outlines; but I thought at once, 'A burglar: what shall 
I do ^ If I scream, he may kill me ; and I can't ]n'etend 
to be asleep.' As I thought this, the tigure bent over me 
and laid its clasped hands lightly on each shoulder and 
on my feet. Just at that moment I remembered a story 
I had heard the day before at luncheon, of a ])oor ])easant- 
girl, generations ago, who had killed herself for love of an 
archduke, and who is said to haunt the castle, under the 
name of 'The Girl in the Blue ]\Iantle.' All my terror 
]iassed into profound pity and intense interest in the 
phenomenon. 'Poor little girl in the blue mantle,' I 
thought, 'you wouldn't hurt me if yon could: I'm not the 
least bit afraid, only very sorry for you.' 1 lay looking 
u]) at h(a' for several minutes, but she made no sign. 
Then, I lifted my hand — and she vanished! 

"All hour later I fell asleep ; and in the morning 1 



V '•-<DQ:i'' U ^SDQrf^"' 



SC^ V ^isiii' 



:cs>- u v»c 



i 



told my Eiig'lisli friends all alxnit it, cxultaul at liaviiii;- ^ 
actually seen a i>ii(»st. They listened eagerly; hut, when 
I had tinishcd, one of them said: 'Ah, my dear, von 
don't know this old house as well as we do I 'Jdie givl in 
the hhic mantle ne\'er goes ahove the second tlooi' ; hnt 
there is an Enu'lishmau in Idaek who hannts the tliii'd !' " 



I w<tnder why li\'ing is so much cliea])ei' in such 
regions as Tirol than with us. The |)o|)uhit ion is deusei'. 









A 'I'llioLKSK MKADOW 



'^ 



the agri<-ultui'al land is not so i-ich, meats are (d'ten im- 
^5r5 ported from America; and yet the traveller finds admirahle 

accomnK.xhitious, with clean and conifortal)le rooms and (^x- -'^f^^ 
cellent food, for ihe e(|uivaleiil of ^l.iTi or $!.:.() a day. 
If he wishes to he extravagant, he can s])end %•! (U' $L\r)(); ^ 
Init compare even that with I'ates at American snunuer 







INNSBRUCK: THE GHOST OF SCHLOSS WEIHERBURG 



hotels or hot, stuft'y boarding-houses! A faiuilv which 
shoiikl settle dowii quietly for the sunnuer iu Tirol or 
Switzerland, Belgium or Germany, would save its steamer- 
fare both ways, almost, in the one item of hotel bills. "See 
America tirst" will not be an attractive summons until 
we have as comfortable inns in our beauty-spots, with as 
modest charges, as the European lands aftVu-d. If that 
be treason, make the most of it ! But I write with bitter 
memories of $4 and $5 a day hotels in the White Moun- 
tains and along the ]\raine coast. Ah, we have much to 
learn in practical matters from our friends over seas. 
As I write, a parcel of letters from little children is 
brought to me, written in French, Italian, German, Dutch, 
and English. Some of the tiny corres]:)ondents are under 
ten; and yet their handwriting and composition are better 
than most American university students could show. 
Here is Angele Daguet, of Fribourg in Switzerland, only 
nine : and her letter looks like copper-plate engraving. 
I think the good Europeans are more thorough, more pains- 
taking, and more economical than we are ; less concerned 
about speed and more about quality. I wish we could 
import something of that temperament, after the fashion 
of the Bulgarian lacto-ferinents ! 

But to go back to Innsl)ruck : there is a university 
of a thousand students, almost all Tirolese ; a museum ; 
and many ugly and uninteresting churches, mostly 
baroque. The Austrian empire is the last stronghold 
of the Jesuits; and their influence on art and culture is 
too well-known to need exposition here. Whoever saw a 
bcaiitifn] Jesuit church, or read a stinndatiuu' Jesuit 




TRAVEL PICTURES 







book? (I do not forget TvrrcU, who was the exception 
that proved the inde true, since Jesnitiy conhl not endure 
him.) The pietv of the Tirolese peasants is refreshingly 
sincere and ardent; l)iit as to the np])er classes, Austria 
is to-dav where Italy was sixty years ago. 

It is good, however, to walk through the fresh green 

tields, geninied with mead- 
ow-saffron, and see the 
weather-beaten crucitixes 
that stretch out arms in 
Ix'uediction over the fruits 
of the ground; and good to 
tiud little shrines along the 
wayside, each with its fresh 
flowers and its kneeling- 
place for prayer; good to 
se(^ the uncovered heads 
when the Angelus rings, and 
to hear the hearty greetings 
in God's Name w^hen even 
strangers meet, yet know 
one another as brothers in 
indie warmer piety in our own 
folk, by banishing that absurd false modesty which is 
ashamed to be seen ])raying, treats God like a poor rela- 
tion, only to 1)0 talked to, or of, with hesitation and re- 
serve, and makes a virtue of its own cowardice? \ 




THE GOLDEN BALCO^S'V 

i:sf]s:sBRUCK. 
Christ. When shall w^e kindle 






'0M 




^''-S'^ 



^^cii'V-:^^ 




XIIL 

THE DOLOMITES AND CORTINA 

OF all the roads in Europe, none can compare with 
the glorious new Dolomitenstrasse, which the Aus- 
trian government comj)leted late in 1910. It runs from 
Bozen to Toblach, about a hundred miles through the heart 

of the Dolomites : past 
mountain tarns in whose 
deep blue waters the 
eternal snows are mir- 
rored ; amidst vast forests 
of larch and pine that seem 
primeval until one dis- 
cerns here and there a 
ruined castle nine cen- 
turies old, uprearing its 
battlements above the tree- 
tops ; over passes between 
gigantic peaks that impend 
threateningly from ten 
thousand feet of height; 
down long descents that 
whirl and ^vind like the 
vol-plane of an aero- 
A DOLOMITE GLE.x. plane; bv rockdiewn tun- 




Twn. 



nels whose windows frame incredibly beantifid pic- 
tures; through little villages (some of them dirty and 
slovenly, Italian fashion ; others worthy of Tirol in their 
cleanly simplicity) with old-fashioned, comfortable inns 
that have not yet been wholly overshadowed by the grand 
hotels springing up along the route ; under the guns of 
fortresses where kodaks are "most strictly prohibited" ; 
along the narrow shelf that overhangs a j^i'ofo^^nd valley 
descending almost vertically, but whose green walls are 
tilled, every square foot of them, or gix'en over to ha}'- 
harvesting; traversing wide upland meadows starred 
with autumn crocuses ; and always matchlessly beau- 
tiful. 

From Innslu'uck one goes to Bozen over the Brenner 
Pass : not now on horseback or in carriages as for nine- 
teen centuries, but by a comfortable express train, in 
about four hours, with entrancing glimpses of valleys 
either side, and castle-crowned crags beetling above the 
road. Half-way is the ever memorable Sachsen-Klenime 
where the gallant Tirolese defeated Lefebvre and his 
army in 1809, rolling artificial avalanches down the pre- 
cipitous walls of the defile. Bozen itself goes back to 
Roman times ; and its vineyards and orchards, sheltered 
from the cold l)y mountain-walls, are evidence of Italy's 
neighbourhood. The bright old city is thriving and pic- 
turesque, though too hot for summer or autumn visits. 
The fruit-market is a delight such as one rarely finds ; 
and the long arcades, Lauhen, such as one sees at Inns- 
bruck and Lugano, are refreshingly clean and cool. The 
fourteenth-century Gothic parish church, its west portal 




trr-f^ 





is' tr ^ix>-g<ys<i^'^'<:s»i^s(ii^ xr' ^ioQ 



THE DOLOMITES AND CORTINA 



^:' 






mp2 



guarded bv two red marble lions older than itself, uplifts 
a gracefnl, open spire two hundred feet above the Walther- 
Platz and its nionnineiit to the minnesinger, Walther von 
der Yogelweidc. ( 'astles look down from the heights 
above: Burg Karneid, and the twelve-ceutnries-old Burg 
Firmian being chief. But when one lifts his eyes to the 
hills and sees for the first time the sunset glow on the 
eastern peaks of the Roseugarten, all else seems scarcely 
worth notice. 

The Dolomites, as all the world knows, are mountains 
of gray magnesian limestone, cold and bare enough where 
not clothed with ice, and worn by the weather into astound- 
ing pinnacles, chimneys, pyramids, towers, castellated sum- 
mits, that seem to have been moulded by a Titanic archi- 
tect. The highest summits are between ten and eleven 
thousand feet above sea-level; and there are wooded foot- 
hills and fertile valleys throughout the whole region of 
say three thousand square miles. When the rays of the 
rising or setting sun touch the gray mountain-tops, all is 
transfigured; the world seenjs on fire I It is something 
like the Alpine-glow one sees on the snow-capped Jungfrau 
sometimes ; but a deeper, richer, more empurpled tinge is 
spread over the Dolomites. Rose-gardens indeed they seem 
for the too brief period of the wonderful phenomenon. 

I saw it at its best when, at 6 o'clock one bright Sep- 
tember morning, I crossed the square to take my place in 
the motor-post for Cortina di Ampezzo. Sinc(» the new 
road was completed, the Austrian government has dis- 
placed its old mail-coaches by handsome motor-cars, seats 
in which are reserved at the ]iostoffice for a very reason- 



m 



V '■<:DC2i^ \f 's::oo-^ V* <:r? 








able charge. One can book throngh, or stop oft" as he likes ; 
but in the latter case there is always some uncertainty as 
to finding a vacant place when it is desired. J^eaving 
Bozen so early, Cortina is reached at G o'clock, with a long 
halt for luncheon at C^anazei. What a day of delight ! 

The autumn manoeuvres were on, and we had two or 
three handsome Austrian oflicers for companions, passing, 
besides, several encampments of troops who all waved 
cheerful greetings at us and looked like bo^-s out playing 
a rather elaborate game. If that were all it was ! I had 
the same feeling later, when I saw the Swiss soldiers 
bivouacking above the St. Gotthard. Taken as sport, it 
was doubtless good fun; l)ut when I recalled that it might 
be deadly earnest any year, and that all these elaborate 
prej^arations tended to provoke war rather than to preserve 
peace, I became more than ever a champion of disarma- 
ment and the Plague Tribunal. 

At Canazei we found the old order and the new side 
by side. There was a Grand Hotel, with liveried 
flunkeys, at the very foot of Sella ; and the motor-post 
pulled up in front of it. All my companions (Germans 
and Austrians entirely) surrendered to the brass-l)ound 
portier and were led within, to a table d'hote. I knew 
better ! Across the valley, among evergreens, beside a 
little glacier stream, stood the Gasthof Weisses Kreuz, 
unpretending, primitive. Thither I went, alone ; found 
a spotless little bed-room under the open roof -beams (it 
rented for one crown a night, say twenty cents), refreshed 
mvsclf, ate and drauk of the best, out-of doors in the gar- 










den I)}' the brook, breathed balsamic fragrance, chatted 
with the kindly old WirfJi — and paid 40 cents for all ! 
iieturning to the motor, I heard bitter lamentations: "We 
paid ten crowns and rose hnngry from the table!" one 
angry Prnssian declared. Ah, the simple life is better 
every way; but unless yon hnrry, I fear you will find the 
D(tlo))}/lensiirisse lined with "Grand Hotels," and will 
have to search long for inns like that of the White (Jross. 

How the sonorous mountain-names thrill one ! Mar- 
molata, Cincpie Torri, Tre CU'oci, Tofana, Pomagognon, 
Pelmaj Sorapis, Croda Possa, Cristallo and ( h-istalliuo, 
fifty luore, each to its pro^Dcr praise and own account. 
The Pordoi Pass is almost seven thousand feet high, and 
the long white road soars over it ^vith scarcely an effort. 

Of all the towns on the road, Pieve-Buchenstein 
seemed most incredible. ( It must not be confused with 
the more famous Pieve di C-adore, Titian's birthplace, 
further south, over the Italian border.) The Sella group 
towers above it; and the traveller is astonished t<> find 
that the one long street of the village, so narrow as to be 
barely passable, is built out over a valley so deep that one 
shivers looking down from the rear Avindows of the houses. 
A lovely church lodges somehow there, and there is a com- 
fortable hotel ; but how the farmers ever venture down 
those abrupt hill-sides to reap or to mow, 1 cauriot con- 
jecture. 

Cortina di Ampezzo, in a wide, fertile valley, is the 
veritable queen of the \vh<»le district. There are vast 
mountains on every side, snow-covered or naked ; but they 
are sufficientlv far awav not to secui threatening, and the 



W^ 








m^. 



THE DOLOMITES AND CORTINA 

immediate regiuii is smiliiiii and deliglitful. 'I'lie l<.)iig 
village street winds nj) toward Toblaeb, past the clinrch 
with its fine detached eam])aiiile (rivalling St. Marlv's, 
the proud Cortinese claim), with many good, comfortalde 
homely inns and two or three large modern houses "fre- 
quented by English and Americans" — ••^iHy folk to llock 
together so ! Myself, I recommend to you the Hotel Cor- 
tina, opposite the church, where yon can eat out-of-doors 
on a terrace overlooking the whole life of the piazza, watch 
the moon rise above the mountains, and talk with the gra- 
cious Marianna, niece of Sior Apollonio, your linst, who 
is charged with the dutv of seeing that the ti'uests are well- 
served. Aj^ollonio is the great name of this valley ; tluu'e 
are any number of gentlefolk who l)ear it and have borne 
it for twenty generations. (Inn-keeping is an hoiuirablc 
profession in Tirol, and one sees the coat-of-arms of bis 
host hanging above the otHce-do(U' comiuoiily enough. ) 
Apropos, the old .Castell di Zanna, seven or eight centuries 
old, just outside the town, is still in the hands of the fam- 
ily that takes its name therefrom; but part of that ancient 
structure is now an automobile rej)air sho]), the days of 
robber-liarons having passed but the old instinct sur- 
viving ! 



It was the Xativity of the Blessed Virgin, and all 
the country-people came down from their mountain farms 
to keep the feast, brave in the quaint and vivid costumes 
which Ampezzo preserves still. Good, honest folk they 
were, with miudi dignity of bearing, and friendly smiles, 
but, fV)r the most part, (piite without beauty. Two little 




maids were caught unawares by my camera, one of them 
looking heavenward as if she saw a vision. After Mass, 
there were the usual noisy accompaniments of a fiesta; 
and I turned away from the crowd to explore for myself 
a wooded mountain-side westward. Idie path dipped 
downward, crossed a roaring torrent, and then climljed 

higher, eve r higher, 
through the most wonder- 
ful larch forest I ever saw. 
There was no undergrowth 
to choke the way and im- 
pede the view ; it seemed 
as if all had Ijeen parked 
by some skilful gardener 
who knew how to conceal 
his art. Little pastures 
appeared, set round with 
trees, but themselves quite 
level and jewelled with 
meadow-saffron, its snnill 
purple flower almost car- 
peting the field as in early 
Italian pictures of Para- 
dise. Further on, the long 
vistas of slender, graceful 
trees, with their feathery branches, opened out magically ; 
I should scarcely have wondered to see Our Lady herself, 
with l)right angels and saints for a guard of honour, come 
down the green arcades, keeping her own festival in a 
place of such supernal beauty ! 




TWO LITTLE AMPJiZZO MAIDS. 




MB 



THE DOLOMITES AND CORTINA 

xVt last I reached a little lake, set round about with 
greenery, and reflecting the abrupt mountain-wall that 
towered a mile above it. A cottage stood there in the 
wood ; and a beaming old contadina brought forth eggs 
and cheese and black bread for my refection. She spoke 
only Italian in the dialect of her region; and what little 
Italian I have is Tuscan. But we understood enough to 
be mutually pleased ; and when I turned my back upon 
Laghi Ghedina and wandered down another way into the 
valley of Cortina, I felt as if I had penetrated into the 
very sanctuary of the Dolomites, and seen the central 
jewel there enshrined. 



/ 



^^. 







XIV. 

A FLIGHT THROUGH SWITZERLAND 

FROM Innsbruck to Bregenz throngh the VorarllxTg 
is alinost as wonderful a journey by rail as that on 
the Albula Railway from Chur to St. Moritz. Precipices 
above and below the line, tunnels, snow-covered summits, 
fertile valleys, castles and convents, roaring mountain 
torrents, busy manufacturing towns : one catches glimpses 
of all, yearns to explore at leisure, but presses onward 
towards the Swiss frontier notwithstanding. At Bregenz 
the search for any memorial of Adelaide A. Proctor's 
heroine of ''The Legend of Bregenz''' is unavailing: no 
one ever heard of her or her gallant deed ! But once St. 
Gallen is reached, ''Ekkehard" becomes a useful guide- 
book, even though little remains of the old monastery which 
the Iluns destroyed, except some of the Irish manuscri])ts. 
I wrote of Appenzell two years ago, in these pages ; and if 
by chance you remember my delight in that cheery moun- 
tain capital on its plateau by Sentis, you will not wonder 
that I rejoiced to have a restful Sunday there, in the same 
old ''Lion" inn where I lodged then — in the same bed- 
room, with the same broadly beaming landlady to welcome 
me. How marvellous the bright costumes and the won- 
derful ]]( nd-<lresses Siiudnv uioruiuu', as tliev crowded the 



"-IMM 








})arisli ebiii'cli I 'I'lic SehlTissli presided above tlie iiuirket- 
place, facing the aiicieut t(_>\vii-lioiise with its })rison-cells 
under the roof; and Sefeli, selling endjroideries and pic- 
ture-postcards by the Kloster gate, reinenibered the Ameri- 
can visitor — not many get so far away from the l)eaten 
track. 

That same desire to see places over again sent me 
flying across all Switzerland, from Appenzell by Ziirich 
and the St. Gotthard Tunnel, to Gandria, that enchanted 
village which impends above Lake Lugano, on the Swiss 
frontier. What a joy it was to find place and peojde 
unchanged ! The Seehof was as clean and primitive as 
ever; my bed-room looked out over the transparent w^aters 
of the Lake (emerald, beryl, jade, according to the light 
that strikes them) to Caprino, Generoso, San Salvatore, 
with all the incredible picturesqueness of their outlines, 
great purple masses so astounding that one rul)s his eyes 
to make sure it is not a drop-scene in a theatre. On the 
terrace they served w^holesome fare at little ir(_)n tal)les 
actually over the water, the fish coming wp to catch the 
crumbs I dropped for them. The quaint little l)oats, with 
their awnings, go past, the oarsman standing wdth his face 
to the bow, gondola-fashion. (At night the Swiss and 
Italian customs-launches sweep the surface of the lake 
with search-lights, to see if smugglers are setting tarift' 
laws at naught by means of those same boats.) Above 
rises the towui itself, with its narrow streets where never 
horse or wheeled vehicle has gone; each tiny bit of garden 
hewn out of the mountain-side, even God's Acre itself 
curiously set in an angle of the rock-walls that dro]i d(^wn 



^^^ 



^ HI ^'X 





TRAVEL PICTURES 

into the lake. The old cliureh lifts its weather-beaten 
frescoes patheticallj- to the snnlight, and friendly children 
play in the piazzella before its open doors, ready to show 
how the l)ells are rnng, or to fetch the kindly old parroco 
if }'(>u want to see him. Olive trees make a gray mist on 
either side along the mountain, and clusters of grapes 
hang ()ver the walls, even above doorways. Best of all, 
my bright-eyed little playmate, Thea, was there, un- 
changed except for two years more of maturing, but still, 
thauk God, child-like and radiantly happy. We sat in 
the garden that has been her family's possession since 
Gandria began to be, and watched the lengthening shadows 
of the western mountains in a sort of serene beatitude, 
remembering that Paradise means a garden, and rejoic- 
ing that here was nothing more serpentine than the lizards 
basking on the garden wall. Thea's English has in- 
creased ; but when it failed or my French and Italian 
proved insufficient, the brilliant young painter who was 
my fellow-gaiest at the Seehof helped out. Himself from 
Basel's most famous family of scientists, art had claimed 
him for her own, and his Paris studio on the Bive Gauche 
is brightened by glimpses of Gandria on its walls. How 
peaceful and friendly it all was ! May ''personally con- 
ducted parties," Cook's tourists, and all that class never 
bring into my Gandria the note of their hustling, offen- 
sively curious, unsympathetic bad manners. Should they 
discover it, I foresee a German head-waiter in soiled even- 
ing clothes instead of the modest little maiden from Ein- 
siedeln who served me on the terrace of the Seehof, a 
wreTched fultlc d'hufe to supplant the d<:»mestic fare, the 






Ss:ivr> 






I 



^^ 










A STREET IN GANDKIA. 



^^i^c^^^.*.^ 



Paris edition of the Xew York Herald on sale, and all the 
other accessories of vulgarity. Ahsif omen. 

The change from Gandria to Goeschenen is like that 
from midsummer to late fall. As I tried to write in the 
garden of the Rossli, the wind blew down from the glacier 
so coldly that I was glad to shelter myself indoors ; though 
the scent of the evergreens was delicious, and the pleasant 
tinkling of the cow-bells as the cattle came down from 
pasturing made music that was a joy indeed. The streets 
of the little Alpine town were filled with soldiers, out 
for the autumn manceuvres ; defending the St. Gotthard 
against a hypothetical Italian attack. They seemed to 
enjoy it all as a sort of picnic, bivouacking round open- 
air kitchens, fishing for pieces of meat in the soup-kettles, 
and talking all together in the strange singsong which 
distinguishes Swiss German ; but a vivid imagination 
could see the play turned into earnest, the black gorge of 
the Schollenen running red with blood (it has done so 
before this!) and the round-faced Swiss lads lying dead 
in hundreds on their own mountain-sides. Ah, war is a 
barbaric survival, never necessary any more ; cruel, eco- 
nomically wasteful beyond calculation, and only less tragic 
for the victors than for the vanquished. Long live Arbi- 
tration and the Hague Tribunal ! 

The Furka Pass is one of the gloomiest and most 
majestically austere in all the Alps. Over the Devil's 
Bridge the post careers, through the Urseren Valley, past 
iVndermatt and TTospental and Realp, climbing ever higher 
and higher in spirals that dizzy one to follow. Grassy 


















THE KirOXE GLACIER. EUKKA PASS. 



fWM^M 








slopes descend almost vertically ; barren, desolate peaks 
rise on all sides ; glaciers discharge their foaming streams 
into the brook far below ; and countless Alpine flowers 
brighten the Avajside. At the summit, between two naked 
horns, eight thousand feet is reached, and a panorama of 
the Bernese Alps opens out abruptly. The descent to 
Gletsch, three thousand feet below, is more abrupt, pas- 
sing close by the frozen cataract of the great Rhone 
Glacier. 

From Gletsch to Brigue, through the upper Valais, 
is a journey not so commonly made, as most travellers go 
over the Grimsel to Meiringen instead : but it is amazingly 
picturesque in its remoteness and simplicity. The road 
follows the Rhone, for thirty miles through a valley green 
and fertile, though not far from five thousand feet high. 
German, Italian, and French Switzerland are all here 
within easy reach, as the names of the towns indicate. 
Here, as in the Black Forest, vast dung-hills are the 
peasant's treasures, piled up at his door ; and cleanliness 
is not conspicuous. If the traveller is fortunate, he may 
catch a glimpse of a herd-maid in the ujiland pastures, 
habited man-fashion, after the antique use of Valais. 
There is never silence in the loneliest part of the valley ; 
the rushing Rhone fills it with sound. 

If there were space, I should tell of Brigue itself ; of 
Visp, where the mountain railway climbs laboriously up 
to Zermatt, damp, dirty, cheerless, wrapped in fog, noth- 
ing like so attractive as half a dozen places in the Ober- 
land, and with only a moment's glim]')se of the awful 
Matterhorn for coriqx'usation ; of Sioii, ]\rartiguy, Triont, 







A FLIGHT THROUGH SWITZERLAND 213 

and the Tete jSToir ; of Vevey and Lausanne; and of 
twenty other places worth seeing'. Bnt, alas! life is roo 
slu)rt. Stop with iiic tor a uioiiieiil, however, at Fi-ihourg, 








S^ 



-.47 



^^ 



to- V ^ 



A ^'I.STA OF FKIPiOUKG 



centre of the French Itonian ( 'atholic region of Switzer- 
land, and pictures(|uely beantiful Ixwond Ix-lieving. The 
great ('hurcli of St. Xieholas, fourteenth century work 
mostly, duniinates the town ; but the old walls and towers 



iZ2^ 



^'^^■S 






-rr-:r^:;3^ 








TRAVEL PICTURES 

wliieli still reiiiaiu, iiiedia'val houses that climb up from 

the banks of the encircliug Sarine to the heights overlook- 

^?^ ing it, the great suspension bridge, and the little hamlets 

I ! just outside, each with a character of its own, whether 

'l^'S lyii^S ^11 ^1^^ deep caiion of the river ov clambering up it.- 

sides, make an effect which is scarcely paralleled in 

Europe. From the railway one sees nothing of all this: 

and those travellers who stop ofi' a train to hear the famous 

organ and hurry on are little better off. Friliourg will 

j\U^ show you its heart only if you are resp(>ctful and un- 

^ hurried. 

.: . V There, as always, I found the most memorable object 

K?^ a little child. A group of children played, one Sunday 
■(Y^ afternoon, in the Grand' Places ; and as I went by, one 
^^ detached herself from the others and ran straight to me : 
Aj^^ grace of congruity, I like to think. A tiny, chubby, dainty 
maid of eight years, she was, in a stiffly starched muslin 
frock, Angele Daguet by name. She put her hand in mine 
and went with me down to the huge lime-tree which is Fri- 
Ixturg's central point, chattering gaily. We parted there ; 
but when I returned from the lower town and all its 
delicious corners that seemed as in the days of the Zaehr- 
ingens, Angele was waiting for me, like an old friend, 
and we finished the afternoon together. Fetite hourgeoise, 
dwelling over her father's tin-shop on the Rue des Alpes, 
l)ut altogether darling: her picture stands before me as 
1 write this, with a letter beside it written so exquisitely 
that I blush for our own American children: 

A moil hie II c/icr (/rand Ami, it bcii'ins, and ends. 



''\I%D 







jm. 



^^'^'5^i%^r^m^^f^='Mi 






Recevez une bonne [x'tlte polgnee dc mains de voire Anyele. 
Dear thing I 

In other years I have written of the Thnner.see, where 
Gunten lies so jx'accfully, its gardens h)oking up to A'iesen 
and beyond to the matchless glory of Bliimlisalp, Eiger, 
JVIonch, and Jnngfrau. How good it was to revisit that 
enchanted regi(>n ; to cliinh up above Aeschlen among the 
perfumed meadows in the joy of their autumn hay- 
harvest ; to hear the sweet Griisse from the lips of all ; to 
gaze at the thousand-year-old church-tower of Sigriswyl 
and look across at the glistening tower of Schloss Spiez ! 
Interlaken is beautiful always; and Luzern, albeit too 
crowded, can never lose its charm. It was Sisikcju, on 
the Urnersee, that I delighted in most, of new ]daces, at 
the end of my Swiss visit: a little village at the mouth 
of a narrow valley, and on the Axenstrassc There are 
pleasant old-fashioned inns, with no i^seudo-splendour ; the 
view is magnificent ; and one feels that he is seeing sonu - 
thing of the people as they are, unspoiled l:)y cosmojiolitan- 
ism, despite the express-trains that whirl through from 
Zurich to Bellinzona so many times a day. I went to Mass 
early in the morning at the old church by tlu' lake. It 
was a saint's day; and after service the bear(U'd Capuchin 
from Altdorf came out into the churchyard with some of 
the congregation and visited certain graves, praying by 
each and blessing those who went with him on that pious 
errand. lie was a venerable man, with a kindly face; 
and when he ha<l finished (all unaware that 1 had photo- 
graphed him), he came over with a friendly salutation to 
2:reet me. 1 ha<l rhouiiht that mv tweeds would disji'uise 



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TRAVEL PICTURES 

iiic s\itiiciriitly ; but, after two miniitfs of small-talk, he 
beaincJ coiilidentl}', and .said, "Sie snid cin F neater, iiic/il 
tcahr?" I acknowledged it; and the rest of our conversa- 
tion was in Latin, until we parted with his blessing' upon 
me and a request for niv prayers f(_)r him. It was a gotxl 
ending. 

.Vh, that inexhaustibly beautiful Switzerland! Its 
people are kind, obliging, helpful, friendly; if indeed "the 
stranger-industry" is chief, the Swiss hotel-keepers know 
their business and do not rob their guests. The slanders 
of hateful, selfish travellers, who must be always finding 
fault and who call them hard names, are wholly unde- 
served. And Democracy, established among the Alps, is 
justified of her children. Switzerland, homeland of Free- 
dom, the song well says. Esto perpetua. 








^•^^ 



BACK TO THE NORTH SEA 

E\'KX tliouiiii the nieJiiciahile fempus a])])r(>;ich('S, 
determined by the date on a steamer-ticket, it is a 
mistake to hnrry down from Switzerland to the sea hy a 
through train, when every mile of the journey is historic 
and much of the way is beautiful. AVhichever way one 
chooses from Basel, intelligently seen, is a road of wonder 
— whether through the Jura and Burgundy to Paris and 
so to Calais or Boulogne ; or by the passes of the Vosges ; 
or down the Rhine to Holland ; or across Alsace and Lux- ^ 
embourg to Ostende. The more devious the l:)etter, 1 
think, with stops all along; and I leave you to make up 
my itinerary from '^'Cook's Continental Tivuc-Tables" — 
if yon have nothing better to do ! 

From Basel to Freiburg-im-Breisgau is half an hour 
only ; yet how foolish to fly past, tniheeding the charms 
of that delightful, clean, prosperous city at the gate of the 
Black Forest ! The lovely old minster, with its open 
spire, seen from the wooded hill that rises just back of it, 
is a middle-age lyric in stone ; and the market-place adjoin- 
ing, fttll of ancient buildings wonderfully fresh and bright, 
and crowded with all the gay costumes of the Schirarz- 
ivalderinnen, makes a worthy setting. It was a delight 



V^ "u ^^cs> V socs;> V ■ 



VVOCi*' V \5D=; 






V^^CK^V^iac 



n 



to have a place in the choir at High Mass on Sunday 
morning, and to notice (as so generally in Germany and 
so rarely elsewhere in churches of the Papal Obedience) 
the heartiness of the congregation's responses, the splendid 
volume of the singing, and the articulate reverence of the 
clergy. Some day, I j^roj^hesy, we shall see a new Luther, 
who will stay within the German Church instead of going 
out, and will restore the Communion of St. Boniface and 
St. Willilu'ord to its earlier purity of faith and apostoli- 
city of government. German Catholics will not always 
be slaves of the Curia, nor take their religion and their 
politics alike from Italian monsignori. 

Freiburg has beautiful environs, shady streets, delight- 
ful parks, and a famous co-educational university, where 
a charming Fraulein of my acquaintance studies biology 
under Weissmann's direction and broods lovingly over the 
miscroscopic revelations of putrefaction. There is a 
splendid city theatre, opened recently under the all-highest 
patronage of the Grand Duke of Baden, the local sov- 
ereign, who lives at Karlsruhe. But the old buildings are 
vastly more interesting; and the towers that remain from 
the ancient encircling fortifications are better than any 
stage setting. There are wood-walks, out into the green 
solitudes of the forest, where all the old Teutonic mytho- 
logy might illustrate itself. But my pleasantest memories 
of Freiburg are of a white villa on the hillside, brightened 
by a household of German friends ; the father a Hano- 
verian, officer of dragoons in the Franco-Prussian war, 
pupil of John LaFarge in New York afterwards, and 
now architect, painter, musician, and man of the world; 













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BACK TO THE NORTH SEA 



219 







THE CATHEDRAL, FREIBURG 






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220 



TRAVEL PICTURES 




the iiiotluT Iiussiaii, and sjx'aking Engiisli to a marvel; 
two eliildren, one, the elder, my University student of 
W(_)rnis above mentioned, the other still a sehool-j)o\- ; all 
so simple and cordial and hospitahle that it is a delight 
unspeakable to be with them. Such good conversation ; 
such geniality; such appreciation of real values! And 
then, in the twilight Ixd'ore dinner, my host sat at his piano 
//^ and gave us the best of Jjeethoven, hushing our applause 
^^^ by beginning marvellous improvisations of his own that 
were like fairy music floating down fi'om cncdianted castles 
hidden in some bosky seclusion of the Schwarzwald and 
awaiting discovery. I do not know any man in America 
with such diversified gifts. .Vh, we have much to learn 
from our German friends in almost every department — 
theology alone, perhaps, excepted ! 

Very few Americans visit Treves, for some reason ; 
^ and yet that ancient Roman colony, with its palace of the 
Cciesars and the Igel column, the highest monument of 
the sort north of the Alps, is fvdl of interest. The Porta 
ISTigra rears its age-blackened masonry like an arch of 
triumph over time itself. Ijut I acknowledge that the 
early middle-age churches interest me even more, though 
the smiling valley of the Moselle, with its vineyards, 
orchards, and flowery farmsteads, is better yet. The old 
Cathedral, combining architecture of many periods and 
still reminiscent of the days when a Prince-Bishop reigned 
in empurpled state, with sword as well as crosier in his 
hand, is the best, though something remains of an early 
Christian l)asilica much older. I wonder why German 
cities are so much cleaner than ours, and more orderlv 




c;>"-J- <iOCii!- V 



fffi^P2^^it(li^ 






.-^ 







every way. If that is the result of "bureaucracy," it 
might be well for us to import a few Prussian bureaucrats 
to show us how — unless that ever-lauded j)rotective tariff 
could be invoked, then as at so many other times, to shield 
slovenly incompetence and selfishness from 
rivalrv! 



foreign 




THE CATHEDRAL, TREVES. 



IT 



It is only a short journey from Treves across the 
border into that lovely land of romance, the Duchy of 
Arden in Shakespeare, to which a fairer maid than even 
Rosalind is heiress (Pray God the greedy, covetous, land- 
grabbing Powers do not make her heritage one of name 
only). Luxembourg, of course, I mean, as you nnist 
know who have visited Vianden with me in other years 
and climbed up to the mighty ruin of the Oranienburg, 
cradle of Orange-N^assau. And here is the picture of the 



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TRAVEL PICTURES 



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gentle, gracious Marie Adelaide, lier own gift, in whom 
the blood of ISTassau, Stuart, and Braganza blends : worthy 
descendant of the Blessed Martyr-King of England, to 
whom must fall the grand-ducal crown of independent 
sovereignty some day — unless the incredible wickedness of 
diplomacy carries out its whispered purpose and, taking 
the Congo from Belgium, offers Luxembourg to Belgium 
by way of "a compensation." An old way to pay new 
debts, surely ; but they used to call it "compounding a 
felony" instead of W elt-P olit'ik ! 

What a wonderful old city is Luxembourg itself ! On 
a cliff, at the junction of two rivers, it is not uidike 
Fribourg in situation ; but its remaining gates and towers 
are more picturesque than aught the Swiss town has to 
show, and the modest palace in the midst gives the touch 
of chivalrous romance so often associated with tiny states 
that have kept their freedom. Woe to the civilization that 
blots out all the little lands to enrich the great ones ! 
Bigness is a dubious blessing: I would rather have Mon- 
tenegro than Siberia — even though Monaco does not have 
the same hold upon a freeman's imagination ! 

From Luxembourg by Trois Vierges to Liege is to 
see the best of the Ardennes country, still largely wooded, 
with ruined castles on every hilltop, and now and then a 
blast-furnace or foundry in the valley. At Liege not much 
is left of "Quentin Durward" days : it is rather the centre 
of Belgian Socialism and iron-manufacturing, with a great 
university and a few fine old churches, but too largely 
modelled on modern Paris. One hears the unfamiliar 
Walloon s]K^ech more commonly there than elsewhere in 




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BACK TO THE NORTH SEA 



H. R. H. MARIE ADELAIDE, 
GRAND DUCHESS OF LUXEMBOURCx. 



223 




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Belgimii. A yteauil)oat ( to descri])e which the term petite 
vitesse must surely have been invented) creeps down the 
Maas from Liege to Maastricht, under hanging shaws, 
through placid stretches of canal, past quintessentially 
mediaeval villages where the shadow of the chateau falls 

across the market-place, and 
the church carillon tinkles 
old-world melodies a little 
out of tune, until at last the 
Dutch frontier is crossed, 
and ]\raastricht, dirtiest 
of Dutch cities, attained. 
Suiall reason for lingering 
there, with Zeeland only a 
few hours away ! 

How good to be back 
once more in Walclieren ! 
"In the world there is 
nothing groat but man," — 
Sir Williaui Hamilton's 
proud a]io])hthegm sur- 
vives in my memory from 
philos(»j)liy lectures "on the 
Hill" twenty years ago; 
"in nuin there is nothing 
great but mind." Pass the latter half: by the rule of the 
former even the Dolomites are inferior to my darling 
Kathje, milking the black-and-white cow with eager fin- 
gers that my lunche(in may not lack its wonted drink ; and 
the ^latterhorn sliriiiks iuto insioniticance beside the thri'e 





THREE WALCIIEREX GRACES. 




<:^''i?^<i^V^>» 




tiny sisters Wilhelmina, Martina, and Christina, the oldest 
only ten, who wait for nie in beaming beatitude by Ter 
Hooge's green shade. I love the mountains ; but these 
sturdy dwellers by dyke and dune are as truly semper 
llheri as any mountaineer of them all, and the wonderful 
wide-s]n'('ading landscape, under a sky of pearl and sap- 





KATIIJE, MILKliS'G. 

phire, has a witchery all its own, that not even Tirol can 
surpass. 

Veere was like home ; and two months' absence made 
the heart grow fonder on both sides, apparently. I walked 
out the Veersche Weg from Middelburg, Buehsach on my 
back and joy in my heart, the autumnal sun transmuting 
even the stubble-fields, and making the beeches radiant 
with a glory exceeding that which clothed them in the 
spring. Every one had a greeting for De Ainer'ikaanselie 
IJomiiir — no unfamiliar tiiiure after six or seven visits! — 








'iWMM^M^MMUI^MU.. 



BACK TO THE NORTH SEA 



227 









aud, (jiiec Zaudvk was ruaclied, the rest of the jouniev 
was like a "jjrogress/' with bright-faced children on -all 
sides clinging to iingers, stick, coat-skirt. Later, as I sat 
peacefully in the front window of De IIuop, I heard mv 
own name pronounced in familiar New England accents, 
and was discovered by three clients of The Living 
('nuRCH wdio had come exploring Veere, moved thereto, 
they declared, by its jn'aises they had read in these 
columns heretofore. I felt the responsiliility ; but they 
were not disappointed, I assure you ! 

But the best of friends must part, alas ! If only one 
could claim that power attributed to certain saints of 
later legends, bi-locality, and be in two places at once I 
Failing that, I said farewell to all the children and their 
parents, feasted my eyes upon the fields and the wind- 
mills, the quaint costumes and the sweet faces that 
crowned them, sat once more upon the roof of the Toren. 
with Cornelia van Wallenburg for companion — she had 
walked three miles that morning, in all the bravery of 
her l-erk-l-leer, to make her adieux — and set my face 
toward Flushing, the Prinscs Jiihiiiia. and Folkestone, 
across the Xorth Sea. 



;./^ 



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^oa*' -J -ocs^ 





XYI. 

GOOD OLD ENGLAND 

WHAT is lovelier than a bright nioriiing in England '. 
The soft radiance of the snn, attempered by the 
moist island air, the tang of soft-coal smoke in the breeze, 
the pleasant English voices, the sqnare-towered chnrches 
that sjjeak of Motherland, the splendid roads inviting to 
a<l\'('ntnre, the paths across fields and throngh woodland, 
with hospitable stiles, the flower-faced children that are 
liest of all: I forgot Walcheren and Arden, Tirol and 
Breisgati and Tessin, Salzbnrg and Wienerwald, not in 
disloyalty, but in the overwli(dniing delight of an incnralde 
AnglojDhilism. The chalk cliffs above the Warren shone 
in the morning light ; the wind roistered merrily along 
the Leas, that splendid promenade above Folkestone 
Harl>onr from Avhieh one sometimes catches a glimpse of 
Bonlogne ; and all the voices of the day said, ''Good old 
England !" 

Folkestone is irremediably snmg and hourr/eoisc, with 
its stucco villas, staring hotels, and alisnrdly named ])oard- 
ing-honses ; Imt southward, within walking distance, or 
reached l>y a delightfully droll horse-tram with unroofed, 
open cars, lie Sandgate and Tlythe, which are better. 
Under the cliffs, just whei-c Sandgate begins, is a low. 



:^ 









f 






^^ 



-oc^-^ 



GOOD OLD ENGLAND 



229 



red brick house whose lawn goes down To the shiuglv 
shore. "( Armani ur," they call it ; and the girls who live 
there affirm that it is the verv l)est school in England. 
I can't answer for that, because I know only one ])U])il 
there: bnt if e.r una clisrc oiiines holds, I believe they are 
riulit. I have been ])resented to the Ai'chbishop of Canter- 




A iiEirrr'ORDyiiiKK j.a.xk. 




:ipn 



bury, the King, and \arious other notables in England; 
bnt if my fairy godmother should give me a magic carpet 
and offer to let me fetch across the sea the one English 
acquaintance I should most like to have for my guest. 
His Grace and His Majesty w^oidd be forgotten in my 
eagerness to welcome iif teen-year-old Knid. 

Enid is still a child, with a o^eat mass of brown hair 



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TRAVEL PICTURES 

eiirliiig over her shoulders, and iiiiioceiit l)i'(>\\'ii eves that 
h:>ok wondei'inglv out n})()ii the world, or brighten with 
delight as thej welcome a friend. Bnt she loves all 
beantiful things intelligently, in art and literature and 
nature, as befits the great-grand-danghter of a famous 
painter and the daughter of William Morris' intimate 
friend; she sketehes (piite marvellonslv ; she writes letters 
that are hits of her own persoiuility ; and, whether she is 
at home in Hertfordshire or at school in Kent, she is un- 
mixed delight. 

Further on, at Ilythe, Marie lives over her father's 
little shop: every bit as dainty and modest and sweet as 
Knid, and very near her — in my heart, whatever social 
chasm ]nay separate them elsewhere. ( d'o be frank with 
you, I came back by night and Folkeston(% rather than by 
day and Queenboro', just to see them!) 

What a contrast ])etween the breezy, open s|)aces of 
the Cinque Ports and midmost London's central I'oar I 
Vet even London seemed homely and familiar with a 
sort of welcoming heartiness; and 1 settled down for the 
last week of my holiday with a comfortable feeling of 
being once more chez nioi, such as no other great cit\- 
that side of the Atlantic can gi\'e. I'here are lodgings, 
and lodgings. Those dingy, doleful establishments in 
l>l(K)msbnrv, which advertise themselves as "homes from 
home" (whatever that may mean), are beyond words. 
r)Ut when a solitary traveller can drop into bachelor (|uar- 
ters such as [ found just otf Piccadilly, he nuvy thank 
St. Ra])hael, ])atrou of tra\'ellei's, and reckon all hotels- 











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W<£ 




GOOD OLD ENGLAND 

well lost. Evervthing as clean as London smoke will 
allow, and with a ])leasant air of domesticity abont it; no 
intrusive service, hut just what a particnlarly good valet 
would render at a conntrj-bonse — I believe the proprietor 
had been a gentleman's servant before he leased this 
house; an admii'able breakfast served in one's own sittiug- 




TllE KAIJAIJIOUSK, 1.ITTLEA[()1JE. 

room, with the morning ])a])er (nicelv selected for your 
supposed taste) spread out before the lire to dry; and 
sweet solitude in the very centre of the rushing world- 
ca]>ital. I have written "7 ( ^harles St." dee]^ uixni the 
tablets of my memory, for futui'e reference. 

It is another sort of region that lies far to the north- 
east, around St. (V)lumba's, Haggerston. The probleui 
(jf poverty, with all it means of over-cn-owding, under- 






m 








TRAVEL PICTURES 

iV'cdiiig, wrotclied lioiisiiii;', and sijualor, is foniui in al 
great cities; but surely nowhere is it so vast and tcrril)lc 
as in London. In onr American slums there is a ])an(j- 
rama of colour flaunting itself among the polyglot crowd, 
or a sort of tierce hopefulness which sets its teeth and 
res()lves to "get on" somehow. There, by contrast, all is 
gray and ho})eless. The countless little streets lined with 
low houses of one pattern, all of dirt)' yellow brick, are 
like the endless recurrences of a nightmare; and the faces 
that pass in the fog are dream-faces, diflerent from those 
we associate with life and usefulness. 1 had seen much 
of the C^hurch's beneflcent WM:)rk in the East End, at St. 
Savi(uir's, Poplar, where dear Dolling died, St. xVugus- 
tine's. Stepney, St. looter's, London Docks, forever hal- 
lowed by the name of Lowder, and other citadels of a mili- 
tant Catholicity, where the despised "llitualists" were 
grap])ling with misery and hunger and sin before evei' Air. 
Begbie's Dissenters had discovered that the East End ex- 
isted. But St. Columba's was new to me; and 1 joyed 
in it. l!\o coni])romise there, of cowardice misnamed ex- 
joediency ; no paltering with vital truths ; no half-way 
measures; but, instead, among the warrens of the ])oorest 
and the dens of the criminal, a s])lendid shrine with a 
Avelcome for all God's children, where daily the ]n'evailing 
Sacrifice is offered and the gracious ministry of reconcilia- 
tion pours oil and wine into the wounds of sin. Eussy 
secular philanthrojiy seems cold and lifeless in com])arison 
with the good-will that aninuites such a centre as St. 
(^)lund)a's; and the good vicar and his fellow-priests are 
worth a reeiment of social settlers. 












t^' %/ ■^4:^' tF^isgi^Stt*' V '^53Sr:<J4' 




GOOD OLD ENGLAND 

]\IoiisigTior Benson, with the nnfailing aci'ini(»ny of the 
renegade, does his worst (in No)ie Oilier Gods) to ponr 
scorn npon the slnm worlc of the Chnrch of England ; and 
there is a hateful picture of his etching in the book just 
named, Avhieh shows a young priest living in a pleasant 
room, as if he were a monster of futility just because his 
room is jileasant ! There is a reasonable a(TK7;o-ts, and 

the ex-priest of our own, once , 
a Religious, who entertained 
theological students at dinner 
last sunnner, and expressed 
surprise when they refused to 
join him in the cocktails at 
the beginning of the meal and 
^ . * ^^ the cigarettes at its end which 

Hf -"-^ ^KL ^^^^ ^^^^^^ environment provided, 

had need to learn something 
from his old instructors. But 
the man who is to do good work 
ill the slums must fortify him- 
self if he is to endure the 
strain; and I recall with de- 
light the tiny house on Har- 
man street, close by St. Coluni- 
ba's, where two of the curates have brought something of 
Oxford atmosphere into Haggerston. Luxury, of course, 
was absent, as it should always be from Christian homes ; 
but there were good pictures, books overflowing the shelves, 
easy chairs, a telephone (not so common a convenience as 
with us), a bright tire, and a beaming "buttons" who 




A KEXTISII MAID. 




TRAVEL PICTURES 




"^WMMmwrnm^ 



^jfrnm^"^'- 



xU^ filled many offices, all with equal eheerfuliiess and skill. 

^ - One seldom hears Ijetter talk than that hospitable bachelor 

^^^ establishment atl'orded; and I blessed a happj meeting 

at Caldey two years before, which had opened such doors 

to me. 

JSTothing is harder to kill than a poor joke: ])S('udo- 
humorists for li'enerations to come will cackle foolishlv 













ADDISON S WALK, OXFOED. 



mm 



M^ 



about )iiothers-in-la\v, forgetting that their other name is 
"Grandmother" ; will chuckle over drunkenness as if it 
had never been declared that no drunkard can inherit the 
Kingdom of Heaven ; and will foster the delusion that 
curates are effeminate young men, fit for nothing really 
masculine and useful, who like to wear clerical clothes and 
who always talk like vapid idiots. Even Punch clings 
to that ex])loded idea; while Life, like some other organs 






5'^V'^c^"'tr^'^<N:^V'^cii^V^^7\5^cs^V 



GOOD OLD ENGLAND 



235 






^■^r^ 






of irreligion, revels in it. I slKtnM like t(> eDiiipHre the 
average junior officer of the army or navy, the average 
newly admitted lawyer, the average broker's clerk, or the 
average dawdler, with the average young priest of the 
Church of England or the American Church : so far as 
intellect, savoir-faire, and physique go, the clergy need 
have no fear, I think. A rather vulgar politician, some 
years ago, at a gathering of American Churchmen, shriv- 
elled visibly when, after having alleged "the number of 
weaklings in the ministry" as a reason for men's not going 
to church, a gigantic IS^ew York rector offered himself and 
a dozen other six-foot priests then present, whose minds 
were not disproportionately feeble, as illustrations I 









mi 






There was a day of joy with Allison, exploring Hert- 
fordshire lanes, visiting the old flint church at Stevenage, 
picking the last roses in the garden, and thanking heaven 
for such companionship. And another little visit to Ox- 
ford, always more l)eautiful, "that sweet city with her 
dreaming spires," which must be dear to every thoughtful 
man who speaks the English tongue. How lovely looked 
St. Mary's Porch, with its twisted columns and Our Lady 
looking down from the niche where blessed William Laud's 
piety had placed her ! What ghostly footsteps echoed 
along Addison's AValk ! How incomparably exquisite the 
college gardens, Xew above all! And what seraphic har- 
mony smote the eye as it fell upon Magdalen Tower ! The 
old mill at Ttiley is gone, alas! but the glorious ^N'orman 
church still rewai-ds the wayfarer who turns aside to pray 





within its walls, though its twelfth-century tower is in 
sad need of repair. (The vicar wishes nie to say that 
£400 is required, and that he hopes some of the many 
American visitors will help him to raise that sura.) It 

was good to cross the 
fields from Iffley to 
Littlemore, where poor 
Xewman's last days at 
Home were passed ; 
l)ut the hospitable old 
farndiouse where the 
school - master -church- 
warden lives is now 
more interesting than 
Xewman's cottage- 

monastery. 

I wa]k(Ml out to 
(Jumnor, in the teeth 
of an Octol)er gale, 
the cloud-shadows rac- 
ing over the low hills 
to keep me company. 
It -was Harvest Home 
that Sunday, and the 
little church was 
adorned with the fruits of the earth in the rather grotesque 
fashion not uncommon at that season. Queen Elizabeth's 
ethgy stared su])eriorly at festoons of carrots and pyramids 
of apples, and Anthony Foster's flattering epitaph pre- 
sided above all, (piite as if KenUirorfh had never been 




J.AUl) S POKCn, ST. MAKY Til E 

virgin's, oxford. 





TOA-T^ 



-Civ 



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GOOD OLD ENGLAND 

written. But the bleak wind searched every cranny 
and Matins not being a service of obligation, I knew 
I should l)e warmer walking back by Osney than assist- 
ing at wdiat is sometimes called "High Wicked Man."" 
How the "Scholar Gij^sy'" haunts one everywhere around 
Oxford ! When Matthew Arnold's chill and donnish 
deism is quite forgotten, that poem will be remendjered 
and loved. I read it aloud on the deck of the 
LiaeUc last summer to a friend who loved it though 
ignorant of Oxford ; and the delight doubled as we 
shared it. 

It was too cold for that journey, which, more than any 
other, opens magic casements into the England of dreams : 
I mean that by the little steamer from Oxford down to 
Henley and ou, the next day, to Richmond. But I made 
up for it by some literary pilgrimages in London itself : 
that to the great w^ater-tower on i^^otting Hill being the 
only one here mentioned, for the sake of Chesterton. 
There was a memorable evening at St. Edward's House, 
Westminster, with Father Puller and Father Longridge ; 
and another, equally enjoyable, in a tiny model tenement 
not far away with friends of another sort. (How silly 
]ieople are who brag of knowing only one "class" 1 As 
well profess a liking for roses wdth a purpose never to 
enjoy the perfume of lilacs or daffodils.) 

But the week waned to its end too soon ! Then came a 
flying journey across England to Liverpool ; a farewell 
frolic wdth the two dearest youngsters in Lancashire, by 
the l)anks of Mersey far aliove the city's grime and roar : 
and, at last, the miohtv new Cunarder whistled its adieux 



mu 



§^ 



TRAVEL PICTURES 

as we tiir]i<'(| wcsr\var(l towards the Laud of Oppor- 
tunity. 

The home ward journey is never so interesting as that 
when one is outward bound. Everyone is a little tired, 
and wishes t':> pass in silent review the memories of the 
summer, rather than to make new acquaintances or to keep 
up the strain of serious conversation. But the voyage was 
over before we realized that it had begun; the familiar 
harl;)our opened its arms affectionately ; a sky bluer and 
brighter than Italy's shone above us; aud the wclldovcd 
faces smiled a welcome to travelers returued. 

"East and West, 
Home is best." 

So this second series of "Travel-Pictures" conies to 
its conclusion, recording the impressions of a wandering 
priest in the sunnner of 1911. If you have been led to 
wider sympathy and readier friendliness with all men, 
of whatever race or condition, by seeiug with his eyes 
something of the beauty of the old worbl, something of 
the goodness that is always found in human nature, he 
will not have failed altogether in his purpose. 

Hereafter, it may be, we shall travel together else- 
where ; perhaps by ISTorwegian fiords, across Swedish 
lakes, along the Baltic, or among the high ridges of the 
Balkans ; we may visit the little states of which I have 
read so long, Andorra, San Marino, Moresnet ; or, more 
probably we shall find oin-selves again wandering hand 
in hand with Wilhclmina, Allison, Yvonne, Marianna, 
Bianca, Angele and the other little friends whom you 



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GOOD OLD ENGLAND 



rrr 



239 



know too. That will appear in God's time. Meanwhile, 
gentle readers, say a prayer for your guide through those 
pleasant regions, and for all the friends he loves that in- 
habit them. 












FINIS 



"IS. -^^ 




v'^ 



IBRARY OF CONGRESS 




